There was a darkly comic aspect to watching Europe try to flatter, persuade and finesse Donald Trump into being three things he is not: reliable, constructive and pro-Ukraine.
On May 10 in Kyiv, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Poland contrived to get what looked like a consensual policy in place between the United States and its Western allies: Vladimir Putin, they said, had 48 hours to agree to a 30-day ceasefire in the war in Ukraine, or else face “crippling” new sanctions. Presumably, these would include Sen. Lindsey Graham’s neutron bomb of a bill, which threatens 500% tariffs on any nation importing Russian oil, gas, uranium or petroleum products. Trump was fully on board with this threat, Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz and Donald Tusk affirmed as they huddled around Macron’s cellphone, through which they anxiously sought and received reassurances from the American president.
But the deadline came and went and no sanctions were imposed. That’s because Putin made Trump an enticing counteroffer: in lieu of a ceasefire, the continuation of direct talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul (where talks began and ended quickly in March 2022 as Russian tanks were still bearing down on Kyiv). Trump embraced this rejection of his own ultimatum as a grand opportunity for peace in our time, posting to his social media platform Truth Social: “Ukraine should agree to this, IMMEDIATELY. At least they will be able to determine whether or not a deal is possible, and if it is not, European leaders, and the U.S., will know where everything stands, and can proceed accordingly!”
Ukraine agreed immediately. The Istanbul conference predictably went nowhere because Russia sent its B-team delegation to Turkey, and its position was the same as it was three years ago when Russia controlled far more Ukrainian territory and before some million Russian soldiers were killed or wounded on the battlefield: regime change in Kyiv first, followed by the terms of Ukraine’s surrender.
European leaders and the U.S. might have known where they stood then and there. Instead, at Putin’s orchestration and with Trump’s encouragement, there were to be more talks about the frameworks for future talks. Ending the war thus seems subject to what Sir Arnold Robinson in the British satirical sitcom “Yes, Minister” dubbed the “law of inverse relevance”: “the less you intend to do about something, the more you have to keep talking about it.”
Now, fresh off a two-hour phone call with Putin, Trump has sounded both optimistic and exasperated in equal measure. His conversation with Putin went “very well,” he said, but it was up to the two combatants to sort out the war because “they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of.” What’s really at issue isn’t Russian missiles and drones raining down on Ukrainian cities or Russia’s abduction of Ukrainian children or the redrawing by force of national borders in the 21st century. It’s rapprochement with Moscow and “TRADE with the United States.”
So much for Trump’s campaign pledge to end the war in “24 hours,” possibly even before he took office. The war is no longer his problem; his top priority is making money.
The Europeans, according to The New York Times, have belatedly awakened to the fact that their agenda can no longer be set in Washington. And they have begun, also belatedly, to do something about it.
On May 20, the EU passed its 17th sanctions package, the main targets of which are 200 ships belonging to Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of deceptively flagged vessels, via which Moscow evades international oil sanctions and enriches itself. (An 18th sanctions package is said to already be in the works, and the U.K. simultaneously hit Russia’s supply chain of weapons systems, including its Iskander missiles.)
Keeping Russia’s economy down as it seeks to gobble up a neighbor’s sovereign territory is good in itself, but Europe also has its own strategic imperative in counteracting the shadow fleet.
On May 13, the Estonian military attempted to intercept a Gabonese-flagged Russian tanker, Jaguar, in Estonia’s exclusive economic zone in the Baltic Sea, only to see the ship escorted by a Russian Su-35S fighter jet, which violated Estonian airspace, into Russian waters. Moscow followed this aggressive maritime action with another: On May 18, the Russian navy stopped a Greek-owned oil tanker, Green Admire, in Russian waters after it left the Estonian port of Sillamae bound for Rotterdam. (Russia released the ship two days later.)
Seaborne confrontations with NATO are accompanied by more brazen territorial ones. The GRU (Russian military intelligence) is escalating its campaign of sabotage, cyberattacks and assassination attempts all across the continent, according to a recent analysis by The Associated Press, using Telegram-recruited assets to firebomb shopping malls, warehouses, museums and military installations, and to vandalize NATO facilities and vehicles belonging to government officials. Another plot to blow up a cargo plane with an incendiary device was recently unmasked in Germany, following a similar one to blow up DHL airliners bound for North America with explosive sex toys and cosmetics.
Europe’s decoupling from the United States on security is said to benefit the Kremlin, which has long sought to weaken the transatlantic relationship and divide NATO. But while the optics of a split between Washington and Brussels are apparent, the details of how a separation would work in practice remain unclear, if not contradictory.
On May 20, Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he once chaired and pointed out, when grilled about the Trump administration’s concessions to Russia, that U.S. sanctions have not been lifted and U.S. arms and intelligence continue to flow to Ukraine, excepting the week-long pause imposed in March by way of punishing Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not being servile enough in the Oval Office. Rubio might have added that the most significant sanctions on Russia’s energy and banking sectors cannot, as a matter of law, be lifted without the consent of Congress.
Does this mean, in other words, that the 80-plus senators Graham has wrangled to support extreme sanctions on Russia will reverse course and agree to reintegrate Russia into the global financial system in the absence of any grand bargain or meaningful peace in Ukraine? And will they do so even as Europe, through secondary sanctions, actively denies Russia full reintegration, including by refusing to reconnect Russian banks to the SWIFT global payments system? Extricating this belligerent power from its mounting economic crisis would only make the United States complicit in any further atrocities Russia commits with its new cash infusion, and thus a facilitator of an invasion both houses of Congress have repeatedly condemned.
One source close to the secretary of state (and interim national security advisor, acting USAID administrator and acting archivist of the United States) told me yesterday, speaking on the condition of anonymity, “Notice how Rubio brings up sanctions on a near-daily basis. He wants Congress to move on the Graham bill because it’s got a veto-proof majority in the Senate and it would scuttle any reset with Moscow.”
Trump, however, is reluctant to move forward with additional U.S. sanctions, even though, as The Wall Street Journal reported, he’s finally admitted to the Europeans that Putin isn’t willing to end the war because he believes he’s winning it.
Strategic realignment of a superpower is a tricky thing to pull off in more capable hands, let alone when a brain trust consisting of Koch-funded isolationist think tank bros and Fox News talking heads is in charge of implementing it. And in matters of foreign policy, what hasn’t happened is often just as revealing as what has.
A useful survey by the Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that the U.S. has a long way to go before it contractually satisfies all of the military aid it has promised Ukraine: “Much of the assistance already approved by Congress is still in the delivery pipeline and will continue arriving in Ukraine for the next several years, barring an administration decision to cancel already-committed support.” (Emphasis added).
Now, it’s entirely possible for Trump to cancel these commitments, which were enacted under the Biden administration, even without a ceasefire or peace agreement in place, simply to further ingratiate himself with Putin. But then, unspooling U.S. aid to Ukraine means unspooling other policies Trump has acquiesced to or himself greenlit during his four months in office. These include sourcing more Patriot missile platforms for Kyiv from Israel; certifying State Department export licenses for direct arms sales to Ukraine; sending nonoperational U.S. F-16s for spare parts and allowing the Netherlands and Denmark to send operational F-16s to bolster Ukraine’s “jet coalition”; and authorizing third-party transfers of U.S. systems and munitions such as Patriot missiles and rocket artillery from Germany and Abrams main battle tanks from Australia.
To actively hurt Ukraine, Trump would not only have to end all direct arms sales and donations to Kyiv; he would have to amend the end-user authorizations of these systems to prohibit their delivery by other buyers, a significant blow to the U.S. military-industrial complex. Three people who spoke to The Wall Street Journal about Trump’s thinking following his conversation with Putin all affirmed that the “Europeans don’t believe the Trump administration will stop U.S. weapons exports as long as Europe or Ukraine pays for them.”
Regardless of what Trump thinks he stands to gain by reopening Russia, if it’s money he’s after, there’s far more of it to be had doing business with U.S. allies than there is with its main adversary.
In 2021, as Russian troops amassed at Ukraine’s borders, the U.S. was on the cusp of receiving $30 billion in imports from Russia, the highest figure since Moscow’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014. American trade with the EU last year was valued at close to a trillion dollars. Moreover, from 2020 to 2024, Europe was the largest arms importer from the U.S. (35%), according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, eclipsing the Middle East (33%) for the first time in decades. (This calculus might have changed again since Trump’s recent tour of the Gulf and flurry of dealmaking and tribute-seeking.)
Even as European nations slowly undertake to ramp up their own procurement efforts and increase the percentage of GDP they spend on defense, there is little sign that they are seeking to discontinue buying American weapons so long as they remain for sale. German defense giant Rheinmetall and U.S. megacontractor Lockheed Martin are reportedly seeking to create a European “center of competence” for rockets on German soil, producing ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems); Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems — the short-range ammunition used by HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems); M270 launchers; Hellfire missiles; Patriot PAC-3 missiles; and Joint Air-to-Ground Missiles. Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger, one high-profile target of a GRU assassination plot, certainly seems to think that whatever comes out of this new plant will be eligible for deployment to Ukraine.
Long-range air defense and rocket artillery are two of the three things Ukraine needs badly and only Washington can (for now) provide at scale, so turning their manufacture into a joint U.S.-European endeavor is certainly one way of letting Europe lead from behind in sustaining Ukraine’s war effort until it is ready, willing and able to lead alone.
Sign up to our mailing list to receive our stories in your inbox.