Donald Trump sounded like a supporter of Ukraine's territorial integrity last September, when he spoke by video feed to a gathering of political and business elites in Kiev.

“Our president is not strong and he is not doing what he should be doing for the Ukraine,” Trump told he group of pro-Western businessmen, diplomats and politicians. “I don’t think you’re getting the support you need."


That view was in line with other statements Trump has made calling for a firmer Western response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's March 2014 annexation of Crimea and support for a pro-Russian separatist movement in the country’s east, according to a review of Trump's public comments about Ukraine since 2014.

In recent days, however, Trump has struck a far milder tone. He now says he might recognize Crimea as Russian territory and lift punitive U.S. sanctions against Russia. The alternative, he warned on Monday, could be World War III.

While the reason for his shift is not clear, Trump's more conciliatory words — which contradict his own party's official platform — follow his recent association with several people sympathetic to Russian influence in Ukraine. They include his campaign manager Paul Manafort, who has worked for Ukraine's deposed pro-Russian president, his foreign policy adviser Carter Page, and the former secretary of state and national security adviser Henry Kissinger.

In the days after Putin annexed Crimea in mid-March 2014, for instance, Trump expressed strong opposition to the move. Appearing on NBC’s “Today” show on March 13, he said that the land grab — which Obama and top European leaders denounced as a gross violation of international law — “should never have happened.”

“We should definitely be strong," Trump added. "We should definitely do sanctions.”

And speaking to the Conservative Political Action Conference a few days later, Trump said that Putin had seized "the heart and soul" of Ukraine. "That means the rest of Ukraine will fall," he added.

But in recent weeks, Trump has sounded far more forgiving of Putin's aggression, which has worsened with the entrenchment of pro-Russian separatist fighters in the country's east, where nearly 10,000 people have been killed in the fighting. Trump now says that he is “going to take a look” at recognizing Crimea as Russian territory, and that he would consider lifting those same sanctions.

And during an appearance on ABC's "This Week" this past Sunday, Trump seemed untroubled by Russia's grip on the territory.

“The people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were, “ Trump said, echoing a frequent Kremlin talking point.

In March 2014, 95.5% of Crimean voters did cast ballots to join Russia. But many residents boycotted the referendum, which the European Union declared “illegal and illegitimate.”

At a Monday rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Trump called it futile to continue pressing for Russia to give up Crimea. “You wanna go back?” Trump asked. “You want to have World War III to get it back?”

Russian special forces seized Crimea after pro-Western protests toppled the country’s president Viktor Yanukovych, a Putin ally who took refuge in Russia. The peninsula, whose population is about 60 percent ethnic Russian, has been a strategic prize for centuries and hosts Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

While few Americans care much about Crimea, Russia's invasion of its neighbor has poisoned relations between Obama and Putin.

Trump has spoken positively about Putin for years and from the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, he has focused less on Putin's aggression and more on what Trump calls Obama's weakness.

But until recently, Trump also frequently suggested that the U.S. needed to take a stronger stand in response. "So far we have all lip service," Trump said of the international reaction to Putin's aggression during his comments in Kiev last September.

Trump's changed tone comes after a period in which he has drawn extensive counsel from relative newcomers to his orbit who have strong views about Ukraine and Russia. One of them is Manafort, whom Trump hired in March and named as his campaign chairman in mid-May. The 67-year-old Manafort advised Yanukovych’s successful presidential campaign in the winter of 2009-2010. Manafort's client was viewed as the Kremlin-backed candidate against more Western-aligned rivals.

In March, Trump also announced a roster of foreign policy advisers that includes Page, an investment banker who has criticized the Obama administration for "fomenting" Yanukovych's ouster, which infuriated Putin. Page, who has likened the U.S. role in Ukraine to Russian meddling in Canada, has extensive business ties in Russia, and has lamented the impact of Western sanctions against Moscow related to Ukraine.

"So many people who I know and have worked with have been so adversely affected by the sanctions policy,” Page told Bloomberg Politics in March. “There's a lot of excitement in terms of the possibilities for creating a better situation.”

A Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Donald Trump has also sought counsel from elder statesman Henry Kissinger.

Trump has also sought counsel from Kissinger, with whom the Republican nominee met in May. Kissinger urges warmer relations between the U.S. and Russia. Kissinger has also criticized both parties for taking an overly confrontational stance on Ukraine. “The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country,” Kissinger wrote in a March 2014 Washington Post op-ed.

But even Kissinger, in his op-ed, called it “incompatible with the rules of the existing world order for Russia to annex Crimea.”

That is the clear position not just of the Obama administration — but also of the Republican Party platform approved in Cleveland at last week's GOP convention.

While Trump officials reportedly blocked a move to add language calling for the U.S. shipment of weapons to Ukraine’s government, the platform does include a firm passage about Putin’s aggression there.

“We support maintaining and, if warranted, increasing sanctions, together with our allies, against Russia unless and until Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are fully restored,” the platform states.

Trump’s comments are also at odds with some of his key allies. “There’s a sense that sanctions will not continue and that Putin will get the upper hand” in Ukraine, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker, told MSNBC in February.

Corker, who has also advised Trump, warned in 2014 of “severe costs for Putin’s illegal actions in Crimea and for any further intervention in Ukraine.”

After vowing on Sunday that Putin is "not going into Ukraine," Trump was widely accused of not understanding that the Russian leader had already done so. Trump's past remarks about Ukraine indicate that he did in fact know that. Trump has since argued that he meant Putin would take no further action there during a Trump administration.

The Kiev conference to which Trump spoke last fall is an annual gathering of Western and Ukrainian elites organized by the billionaire mogul Victor Pinchuk, one of Ukraine's wealthiest men. In his remarks to the gathering, Trump indicated that he knew Pinchuk well.

“Viktor, by the way, is a very, very special man, a special entrepreneur,” Trump said. “When he was up seeing me I said, 'I think I can learn more from you than you can learn from me.'”

Pinchuk, who is the son-in-law of former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma, has also donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Global Foundation, and even hosted Bill and Hillary Clinton at his conference.

"I know many people who live in the Ukraine. They’re friends of mine," Trump said. "They’re fantastic people."

Many Ukrainians do not return the sentiment, especially after Trump's latest remarks. On Monday, Ukraine's former prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, tweeted that Trump's words had violated “the very values of the free world, civilized world order, and international law."

"This is a breach of moral and civilized principles," Yatsenuk wrote.