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Trump has a history of dealing extremely generously with Putin and taking him at his word. If Putin or his representatives told him it was really Ukraine's fault, I would expect Trump to repeat that. It's probably not helping that Zelenskyy recently pointed this out, since Trump is notoriously fragile.
The other half of this is that Trump has the mind of a thug. When the powerful threaten you, you make concessions. If you don't, it's your fault for whatever happens.
How is it more advantageous to fight the powerful and risk losing more?
If I'm being mugged, I can hand over my wallet or I can fight. If I fight I might get beaten up and still lose my wallet. If the mugger is some 150 kg, tattooed musclebound thug known for his huge gun collection (while I am unarmed and substantially smaller), then it's very likely I'll lose. Getting helpful advice and some second-hand brass knuckles from onlookers isn't likely to change the outcome. It's likely to end with me bleeding out, unconscious on the ground.
Nothing about what's happening should be surprising. It is very rare for small states to defeat big states in industrial wars where both sides are determined to win. Observe that the conclusion of the Winter War was Finland losing all the land that the Russians demanded and more. Size matters.
This was an extremely common argument on this board just before and during the early stages of the Ukraine war.
It would have resulted in fewer overall deaths but has plainly been disproven by what actually happened.
The longer the war drags on the worse it gets for Ukraine, but with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight they made the right call to fight.
It appears that for all the blood and treasure spent since the early war peace deal was derailed, they're probably getting the terms of the early war peace deal.
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