After the much-ballyhooed summit in Alaska, anxious Europeans (including Ukrainians) believe the worst did not happen. President Donald Trump did not agree to hand over chunks of Ukraine to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, at least not yet, or to limit European aid to Kyiv.
But that does not mean European leaders are completely at ease.
After meeting Putin and debriefing European leaders, Trump now believes a peace treaty can be done rapidly, as long as Ukraine agrees to give up more territory in the eastern Donbas region, putting the onus on President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to agree, two European officials said on Saturday. The officials requested anonymity to discuss private talks.
In comments after the Alaska summit on Friday, Trump lavishly praised Putin at the expense of Zelensky. After all, Trump said, “Russia is a very big power, and they’re not,” he told Fox News, referring to Ukraine.
“Now it is really up to President Zelensky to get it done,” he added. “I would also say the European nations have to get involved a little bit.”
Whether he meant that the Europeans should also pressure Ukraine to come to terms or that they should provide further aid and assurances to Kyiv was not clear. Zelensky said on Saturday that he would meet Trump in Washington on Monday and may bring some European leaders along for support, doubtful that a serious peace treaty could happen as quickly as the American president seems to think.
But the outcome of the short Alaska meeting, with more talks to come, reveals an underlying problem for the Europeans. They have no strategy of their own for bringing the war to a close, let alone for defeating Moscow. Instead, they have been racing to keep up with the variable stances of Trump, trying to hold him to certain red lines that protect Ukrainian sovereignty and European security.
For Trump, the war in Ukraine, which he consistently blames on Zelensky, is an obstacle to his desired relationship with Putin. But for Europe, the fate of Ukraine is of strategic importance. If Ukraine collapses, European military and political leaders predict a Russian effort to test Nato in the following few years. If a militarised Russia can be held off — or even beaten back — it may end or retard Putin’s ambitions to upend the post-Cold War order and recreate the Soviet empire.
It was a deliberate statement of intent when foreign minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia arrived at his Alaska hotel wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned, “CCCP”, Cyrillic for USSR. For Putin, clearly, Russia in its current borders is a way station on the road to a restored empire. Europeans know it, but they doubt that Trump does, or much cares.
The Europeans, hurrying to rebuild their own defences and unsure of Trump’s commitment to Nato and collective defence, let alone to Ukrainian sovereignty, are trying to hold the ground in Ukraine in the face of slow Russian advances in the Donbas. Defeating Russia seems beyond them. As Gérard Araud, a former French ambassador to Washington, is fond of pointing out, the Europeans are not willing themselves to fight Russia for Ukraine.
Anatol Lieven, of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a research institution in Washington, said, “I can’t see that the Europeans have much of a strategy at all.”
He added, “Until this year, when Trump started this confused peace process, they were demanding things that were never going to happen, like the complete Russian withdrawal from all Ukrainian territories.” Now they have shifted, following Trump, to accepting that for the foreseeable future, Russia will keep the 20 per cent of Ukraine it has already conquered. What they want to do is ensure that Russia will stop there.
European leaders issued a joint statement on Saturday after speaking to Trump, praising his efforts but not echoing his view that peace talks were preferable to a rapid ceasefire. They welcomed his declaration that the US would contribute to future security guarantees after any peace deal, and they vowed to keep up economic pressure on Russia until the war is over.
“The Europeans know Trump’s unpredictability, his lack of sympathy for Europe and for Ukraine, and his curious affection for Putin,” said Michael C. Kimmage, professor of history at the Catholic University of America and author of Collisions, about the origins of the war in Ukraine. But they also need Trump, Professor Kimmage said.
“Europe always ends up reacting to Trump, trapped in circles of Trump activity — so a strategy seems impossible for Europe to muster,” he said.
Still, underneath the tumult, Professor Kimmage argued, is the old strategy of the Cold War, modernized: containment over the long run, including economic isolation of Russia.
But in the short run, containment depends on helping Ukraine, short of troops and with dwindling morale, build a defensive line that can stop the steady Russian advance, however slow and costly. That, combined with the kind of economic and political pressure that only the US can provide, might convince Putin that he has got as much as he can and that it is time to end the war.
But the effort is more difficult now, with Trump evincing support for Putin’s narrative and showing no signs of putting pressure on him, despite intermittent threats to do so.
“Trump’s affinities lie with Russia and his admiration for Putin, and his desire to get along with another great leader and make deals,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, an American former intelligence analyst now with the Center for a New American Security. “That’s why we’ve seen him avoid actually imposing any meaningful costs on Russia.”
For his part, as he did again in Alaska, Putin continues to demand solving “all the root causes of the conflict” — which he believes is the encroachment of Nato into the Russian sphere when the Soviet Union collapsed.
New York Times News Service