Inside the Trump administration's quiet shift on Ukraine

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

50% : "Now Trump has skin in the game," said one.
47% : While most western leaders, and Kellogg, the US special envoy to Ukraine, were critical of Putin's offer of direct talks, saying there should first be a ceasefire, Trump praised the Russian leader's gambit, hailing a "potentially great day for Russia and Ukraine".
45% : " Indeed, under one of the set of proposals circulated by the US last month for ending the war, Washington expressed its willingness to recognise Russia's rule over Crimea -- a concession that enraged Ukraine and the EU, but was rejected by Putin.
41% : On Sunday he agreed to the Putin proposal of direct talks in Turkey after Trump urged him to accept it.
40% : Thomas Graham, a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former senior director for Russia on the National Security Council staff, said Trump would struggle to achieve one of his main goals -- a reset of relations with Russia -- without first resolving the problem of Ukraine.
36% : "Trump definitely sees that Putin isn't playing ball," said Eric Green, a former aide to president Joe Biden at the National Security Council who is now a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think-tank.
35% : Putin, he added, "would be making a huge mistake to try to play Trump".
34% : "Trump is concluding that Putin is not a friend of the US," said Bill Taylor, who served as the US ambassador to Ukraine from 2006-09.
32% : Russia's apparent intransigence is proving an irritant to Trump, say observers.
24% : "He's calculating that Trump will lose interest and the Americans will cut off military assistance, and that will make the Ukrainian army weaker," the former US ambassador to Russia said.
21% : But it remains unclear whether Trump really has shifted his sympathies to Ukraine -- or is prepared to punish Russia for its recalcitrance.

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