Last week, Trump-appointed special envoy Steve Witkoff called Ukraine’s NATO ambitions “a threat to the Russians,” implying that this is what provoked the war three years ago. “The war didn’t need to happen — it was provoked. It doesn’t necessarily mean it was provoked by the Russians,” Witkoff said on CNN.  

His message is clear: Russia was backed into a corner, forced to act in self-defense when it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The evidence, of course, tells a different story — one of imperial ambition, not self-preservation.

The claim that NATO expansion triggered the war is nothing new. Western leaders, including those in the Biden administration, France and Germany, have long voiced concerns about Ukraine’s membership, often out of fear of escalating tensions with Russia. But what President Trump is doing is qualitatively different, and far more dangerous.

Previous administrations sought to prevent an all-out NATO-Russia conflict, but they never endorsed the idea that Ukraine was to blame for the war. Their hesitation was a strategic calculation to avoid another world war. Witkoff’s comments, however, go much further: they directly echo

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