WASHINGTON, October 21. /TASS/. US President Donald Trump will likely respond to Vladimir Zelensky’s attacks against him with a campaign of "maximum pressure" on Kiev, David Pyne, a former US Army combat arms and headquarters staff officer, told TASS.
"Trump is clearly frustrated by his [Zelensky’s] attempts to go over the President’s head to appeal to other audiences, and they [US executive branch officials] are likely to respond [to Kiev] with a ‘maximum pressure’ campaign, as we’ve seen with the recent restrictions on [satellite communications] Starlink access. I think he [Trump] will respond very negatively [for Ukraine] like that," said the expert, who runs The Real War blog on Substack. Pyne served as a defense and foreign policy adviser to prominent US entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy when he ran for US president in 2024.
According to the expert, Zelensky is effectively burning bridges not only with Trump but also with the faction of the ruling US Republican Party that has little enthusiasm for continuing to provide assistance to Kiev. Some of these figures could become part of the new leadership of the US House of Representatives following the midterm elections, Pyne predicted.
"And even Zelensky’s allies in the Rada and abroad are warning him to stop attacking Trump as he continues to burn bridges not just with Trump but with Ukraine War-skeptic MAGA Republicans in Congress who will likely be ascendant in the leadership of the US House of Representatives following the midterm elections as the current pro-war Speaker [Republican Mike] Johnson is set to be thrown out of power after the Democrats sweep the November 3rd midterm elections," the analyst believes.
MAGA (Make America Great Again) was the main political slogan of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and has since become firmly established in the US political lexicon.
In Pyne’s view, Trump is approaching "a point of no return" in his relationship with Zelensky.
"I believe President Trump is getting closer to a point of no return with Zelensky as relations <…> have cratered to their lowest level since March 2025. Given Zelensky’s public attacks on the [US] Administration and his refusal to consider a peace deal, it is likely that the White House will soon make good on his threat to cut off all remaining US military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine to force his hand, but it is unclear how soon that might happen," the retired US Army staff officer added.