When it came to diplomatic efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, Donald Trump and his team spent months pushing an awful lot: Ukraine, the Republican president said, would have no choice but to reward Vladimir Putin by letting the Russian leader keep Ukrainian territory he seized by force. It was, the White House argued, the only way to help bring the deadly and devastating conflict to an end.

Then the American president surprised many last month by reversing course: In unexpected declaration, Trump said that he believed Ukraine, with European Union assistance, could win back its territory from Russia and return the country to its original borders.

The reversal delighted much of the Western world, though it was an open question as to when or whether Trump, who’s reversed course several times on matters related to Russia’s war in Ukraine, would change his mind.

In the immediate aftermath of the American president’s comments, one European diplomat told Politico, “We just have to make sure Trump doesn’t speak to anyone else.” Another European diplomat added that Trump is “always one Putin call away from doing something not great.”

A few weeks later, Trump had a Putin call, at which point the Republican did something not great. The Washington Post reported:

Russian President Vladimir Putin put his relationship with President Donald Trump back on track with a phone call just ahead of Trump’s crucial Friday meeting with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, that was meant to include discussions of providing Ukraine with powerful new long range weapons. Up until the Thursday phone call, Trump had seemed ready to boost Ukraine’s arsenal and negotiating position with Tomahawk cruise missiles. But in its wake and after the subsequent meeting with Zelensky, Trump played down all talk of the missiles and instead focused on yet another summit with Putin.

Indeed, after Trump’s chat with the Russian leader, the American president hosted a White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and according to a report in The Financial Times, Trump “adopted many of Putin’s talking points verbatim.”

What’s more, the Republican not only started hedging on providing Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles — weapons the administration appeared likely to provide, right up until Putin spoke with Trump over the phone — the American president also reversed his reversal on rewarding Russia with Ukrainian soil.

On Friday afternoon, Trump published a statement to his social media platform, suggesting Russia and Ukraine simply adopt the status quo as a way to “stop the killing.” The problem with that approach, of course, is that it would allow Putin to keep foreign territory he took by force as part of a policy that Trump appeared to reject a month earlier.

Soon after, the Republican sat down with Maria Bartiromo for his latest Fox News interview, and the host asked whether Putin might end his war “without taking significant property from Ukraine.”

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Trump replied, “Well, he’s going to take something. I mean, they fought, and he has a lot of property. I mean, he’s won certain property.”

Of course, his use of the word “won” made it sound as if this were some kind of game or contest. It’s not. Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of a neighboring country, kicking off the largest war in Europe since World War II. Putin expects to keep some of his ill-gotten gains.

For Trump to endorse those wishes is to embrace the appeasement of a dictator.

Zelenskyy, meanwhile, remains opposed to rewarding Putin with chunks of Ukraine. His position suggests that if the American president is serious about resolving the war that he vowed to end within 24 hours of his inauguration, he’ll likely need to reverse the reversal again.