Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. There’s been a new development, a new phase in the Ukraine war.

I know we’ve talked about it before, but more recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin has escalated his attacks. Not so much on the battlefront per se, but on civilian targets that he is hitting with missiles and drones as far west as Kyiv. And this has solicited an angry response from President Donald Trump.

I think the subtext of Donald Trump is:

Well, wait a minute, Vladimir. I have sort of told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy not to ask for so much and be willing to have a ceasefire. And we have a deal in the works. And now you’re kind of fouling it all up.

And the deal was, pretty much, you’re gonna get the Donbas and Crimea and institutionalize it. And we’re gonna get some kind of arrangement to arm Ukraine, but it will not be officially in NATO. And somewhere where the battle line is today we’ll have a ceasefire. And then there will be an economic zone of rare minerals. It’ll be kind of a tripwire. And out of that general framework we can have a peace conference and hammer out the details.

But now you’re doing this escalation that’s........

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