The writing is on the wall for the US approach to Europe and Ukraine
Once again, it seems Donald Trump is convinced that an end to the war in Ukraine is within reach. As with previous iterations of his negotiating strategy, he believes that all that is required to secure this deal – and also his case for a Nobel peace prize – is the application of sufficient pressure on Volodymyr Zelensky and yet another deadline.
Hence, we are told, Trump has impressed on the Ukrainian president via his preferred envoys – real estate developer-turned-all-purpose peace envoy, Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law, Jared Kushner – in a phone call on 6 December that he wants a peace deal agreed “by Christmas.” During an interview with Politico two days later, on 8 December, the US president reiterated that Zelensky was “gonna have to get on the ball and start accepting things… ‘cause he’s losing.”
From Trump’s perspective, this appears to mean Zelensky accepting the terms of a 28-point peace proposal drafted by Witkoff and the head of the Russian sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev, in late November. Those terms include ceding strategically important Ukrainian territory to Russia, submitting to limits on the country’s armed forces, and giving up all hope of joining Nato, in return for reconstruction funds and vague promises of “reliable security guarantees”.
This is not the first time Zelensky has found himself on the receiving end of Trump’s mob boss-style diplomacy. During the first 11 months of Trump’s second presidency, Zelensky has been pressured to sign over the rights to Ukraine’s mineral wealth, declared a “dictator”, publicly berated in the Oval Office, and ordered to sign a peace deal by Thanksgiving (27 November) and now Christmas. To be fair, Trump has also issued a series of deadlines to Vladimir Putin, all of which he has then extended or ignored. He has also fatally undermined his credibility with the Russian leader by feting him at a red-carpet summit in Alaska in August, and failing to mask his disdain for Zelensky and eagerness to explore the tantalising business opportunities Moscow has dangled before him, if only they can get past the awkward business of this war.
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In response, Zelensky and his European allies have turned to their now well-worn playbook; they placate Trump in public, welcome his efforts to end the war, then work furiously behind-the-scenes to put together a more palatable counteroffer, which Russia then rejects. Europe’s designated Trump-whisperers get to work persuading the American president that Kyiv is not the impediment to peace, then Trump loses interest and the whole cycle starts again. These efforts have appeared to be bolstered at times by the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, whose past experience on the senate intelligence committee has made him less credulous of the Kremlin’s entreaties than Witkoff and Kushner, and more inclined to push back against a deal on Russia’s terms.
So, the original US-Russia 28-point plan, which was unacceptable to Ukraine, has now been whittled down to 20 points by Kyiv and Europe, rendering it unacceptable to Moscow (although it was never clear that Putin would agree to all aspects of the original proposal), which has since demanded “radical changes” to the document.
But this strategy is reaching its limits. Trump is demonstrably losing patience. In a call with Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and French president Emmanuel Macron on 10 December, he said he had delivered some “pretty strong words” and insisted that Zelensky should “be realistic” in terms of what Ukraine could hope to achieve. Merz offered to host talks in Berlin on the revised proposal next week, but Trump said he had not yet decided whether a US delegation would attend.
In truth, the writing is on the wall in terms of the Trump administration’s approach to both Europe and Ukraine. Regardless of whether Merz et al succeed in navigating a course around Washington’s latest ultimatum, and buying time for Kyiv, there will be no going back to the days of massive US military aid packages for Ukraine as long as Trump is in power, which will be for three more years, until January 2029. The US is still prepared to sell weapons to Europe for use in Ukraine, for now, and to share valuable intelligence with Kyiv, but those critical flows have already been cut off once and will be endangered again whenever Trump decides he needs more leverage. Zelensky’s domestic position has been further weakened by an unfolding corruption scandal that has already forced the resignation of his chief of staff (who denies any wrongdoing) and a worsening manpower shortage on the frontline.
This will only embolden Putin to hold out for his original, maximalist demands, increasingly confident that he was correct in his assessment that western resolve would collapse before the staggering toll of Russian casualties and economic pain forced him to abandon his assault. With Trump in the White House, openly telegraphing his hostility towards Zelensky, and his antipathy towards many European democracies, Putin has no reason to accept a compromise. Ironically, this might well make Trump’s palpable determination to end the war even harder to achieve.
In case there were any remaining illusions among European leaders about the nature of Trump’s foreign policy, it was spelled out in the new National Security Strategy, published in early December. Along with vowing to enforce a new “Trump Corollary” to the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which asserted US dominance over the Western Hemisphere, the NSS made clear that an “expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine” was a core American interest, along with re-establishing “strategic stability with Russia,” whatever that means. More than that, the document claimed that a “large European majority wants peace,” which was being denied by their “governments’ subversion of democratic processes,” as opposed to, say, Putin’s imperialist ambitions and continued assault on a neighbouring democracy.
The text went on to warn about the supposed threat of “civilizational erasure” in Europe, which appeared to mean the increase in non-white citizens, along with what it claimed were efforts by the European Union and other transnational bodies to “undermine political liberty and sovereignty.” The US would therefore work with “patriotic European parties” – presumably including Reform in the UK, the far-right Alternative for Germany, and National Rally in France – to “correct” Europe’s current trajectory. In other words, the Trump administration is planning to work against the very leaders with whom he is currently negotiating the future of Ukraine.
The United Kingdom did not even merit the basic courtesy of getting the country’s name right in the document, which described the US as being “sentimentally attached to the European continent – and, of course, to Britain and Ireland.” No longer even great, apparently, and sorry, Northern Ireland, not even a sentimental attachment to you. A longer, unpublished version of the NSS seen by the US defence publication Defense One, reportedly also included a call to draw Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Poland away from the EU, and to establish a new core group of countries, to be known as the C5, including the US, China, Russia, India, and Japan, which would rival the G7.
Putin has long sought to fracture western unity and renegotiate Europe’s security architecture. But surely in his wildest dreams, he could never have imagined an American president would share that goal. The Kremlin’s longtime spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, commended the new security strategy as “largely consistent” with Russia’s vision of the world.
As Zelensky and his European allies now scramble, once again, to extract workable terms from the latest Trumpian maelstrom, it is still possible, if unlikely, that a realistic peace plan, that does not require Ukraine’s capitulation will yet emerge. But whatever the outcome of this immediate crisis, it should be clear by now that a much greater reckoning and fundamental geopolitical reordering confronts the continent as a whole. Trump has laid bare his priorities and his world view, and it is long since time for European leaders to take him at his word.
[Further reading: Europe is losing Ukraine]
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