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Trump says Putin has gone “CRAZY.” What next for the war in Ukraine?
Tue, 27 May 2025
Trump said in a social-media post that Putin has “gone absolutely CRAZY,” after Russia’s latest attack on Ukraine. Reuters reports. Police in New Orleans relied for years upon a live-facial-recognition program, an unprecedented surveillance method in the United States. The Washington Post’s Doug MacMillan explains how it worked and the controversy around it. For some 2025 grads, commencement ceremonies have become a place to protest the war in Gaza. CNN and The Guardian have the story. Plus, a car drove into a parade marking Liverpool’s Premier League soccer title, why the head of a U.S.-supported Gaza aid program resigned, and the older film titles breaking new holiday records. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Chapter 1: What recent events escalated the war in Ukraine?
But first, Russia's war in Ukraine took dramatic military and diplomatic turns over the weekend. Russia struck Kiev and launched its largest combined aerial attack since the start of its full-scale invasion in February of 2022, killing at least 13 people. In response, President Trump came out attacking Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Chapter 2: What did Trump say about Putin's actions?
I'm not happy with what Putin's doing. He's killing a lot of people, and I don't know what the hell happened to Putin. I've known him a long time, always gotten along with him, but he's sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don't like it at all.
Chapter 3: How does Trump's stance affect Ukraine?
Later on social media, he said Putin had gone, quote, absolutely crazy. But he also took aim at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, saying he was doing his country no favors. Trump's unpredictability with Russia has left analysts, allies and enemies alike searching for a strategy.
Chapter 4: What are the implications of Trump's unpredictability with Russia?
He has, on the one hand, denounced the democratically elected Zelensky as a dictator and suggested Ukraine is at least partly responsible for the war. On the other hand, Trump has, with some caveats, allowed military aid to continue flowing into the country and signed a minerals deal that could tie the two countries closer together.
Meanwhile, his latest outburst comes just a week after he celebrated a, quote, very good call with Putin. Now relations appear to have gone cold again, with Putin's spokesperson describing this as a moment prone to emotional overload. Given the ambiguity of the administration's diplomacy, it can be difficult to know what to pay attention to and predict where things might go next.
But one place to look might be to those who did this for a living and who worked for the Trump administration in his first term. Here is retired Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, Trump's former national security advisor, speaking to CNN last week as Trump was preparing to call Putin.
Even though he would make statements at the time when I was national security advisor that I found unseemly about Putin, he took strong action against him. And I think what's going to happen here is that President Trump is going to be faced with the decision to either accommodate Putin or put a hell of a lot more pressure on him.
And I think really the path that he'll ultimately take is to put a hell of a lot more pressure on him.
But McMaster's optimism that Trump will eventually pivot to a more conventional U.S. approach and help Ukraine isn't shared by everyone.
But Trump, he wants Ukraine just off the docket. There's a kind of, if they don't make any progress, then they're just going to move beyond it.
That's Fiona Hill, one of the Trump administration's most senior Russia advisers in his first term, speaking recently to Radio Free Europe.
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Chapter 5: How are college graduates protesting the war in Gaza?
We have a president in the form of Donald Trump, who actually has the same worldview or a very similar worldview to Vladimir Putin. He sees the world in terms of big powers carving everything up. And from the very beginning, he said, Ukraine's not my war. I don't want anything to do with that. I want to get on with, you know, meeting, you know, with Putin and sorting out other issues.
If Trump's actions in recent weeks show any consistency, it's in their deviation from diplomatic expectations and an attraction to bilateral deals. In one sense, a staunch defender of Israel, Trump sidelined the country in recent hostage talks with Hamas. He made a deal with the Houthis in Yemen despite their ongoing conflict with Israel.
And in Syria, he warmly embraced the new president, a former member of a group the U.S. regards as terrorists, and unilaterally dropped sanctions, a move the EU followed shortly after. Here's Fiona Hill again.
Chapter 6: What controversies arose during graduation speeches?
I think the doctrine is fairly clear and Trump has been very consistent. Making America great again means America first or rather him and his immediate circle first. Everything is sort of a dealing with him as a sovereign, you know, really rather than even a unified executive branch representative. He's definitely pulling everything back to home and if he does indeed make deals,
with Russia, with China, with Iran, then North Korea again. I think his argument would be that, well, we've basically cut off any risks for the United States. This is the end of the international system as we know it. I mean, frankly, it's been crumbling for quite a long period of time.
In recent days and weeks, college and university graduates across the country have walked the stage and received their diplomas. It comes at a time of mounting uncertainty within higher ed institutions, grappling with Trump administration policies toward international students and its attacks on pro-Palestinian protests.
For some 2025 grads, these commencement ceremonies have become a place to voice frustration over how schools have responded to the conflict in Gaza and conflict with the Trump administration. At George Washington University in D.C., student speaker Cecilia Culver used her graduation speech to express solidarity with Palestinians and to criticize the school's ties to Israel.
I cannot celebrate my own graduation without a heavy heart, knowing how many students in Palestine have been forced to stop their studies, expelled from their homes and killed for simply remaining in the country of their ancestors.
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Chapter 7: How has the university's response affected students?
The university issued an apology for Culver's remarks and banned her from GW's campus and other university events for not following her pre-approved speech. At New York University, student graduation speaker Logan Rosos had his degree withheld after deviating from previously approved remarks to add this.
The only thing that is appropriate to say in this time and to a group this large is is a recognition of the atrocities currently happening in Palestine.
In a statement, a university spokesperson said that NYU is withholding his diploma while they pursue disciplinary actions. And recent detentions and deportations of students have also been a focal point for commencement ceremony protests. Mohsen Mahdawi, a lawful permanent U.S.
resident and Columbia student who was arrested by immigration officials during a naturalization interview and eventually released on bail, walked across the graduation stage last week with his classmates. The Palestinian student wore a keffiyeh with his cap and gown as he crossed the stage. After, he spoke at a vigil for students targeted for deportations.
It's much larger than Democrats or Republicans, much larger than Israelis or Palestinians. This is our humanity. And what this university has done to Mahmoud and to me is a betrayal to the values and the principles that we come to this university to learn and to study.
The student he name-checked there was Mahmoud Khalil, a fellow Columbia student and U.S. green card holder who's currently detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Louisiana. His name was also evoked by Columbia's acting president, Claire Shipman, while addressing graduates.
Columbia has faced fierce student criticism for agreeing to many of Trump's demands on policing its protests in the face of funding cut threats. She was booed last week at commencement.
We firmly believe that our international students have the same rights to freedom of speech as everyone else, and they should not be targeted by the government for exercising that right. And let me also say that I know many in our community today are mourning the absence of our graduate, Mahmoud Khalil.
While some of the other students who were detained have since been released, Khalil remains in custody because a federal judge in New Jersey has yet to make a decision on whether or not to release him on bail.
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