BERLIN — European allies of the United States have been trying to convince President Donald Trump of the virtues of a shared approach toward ending the war in Ukraine, to enhance leverage on both Russia and Ukraine and to preserve European security.
But Trump and Vice President JD Vance insisted Wednesday that a set of proposals that their administration presented to the Europeans and Ukraine last week was now a kind of ultimatum, with the United States increasingly prepared to walk away. European officials who saw those proposals as too favourable to Russia and President Vladimir Putin face a dilemma.
If Trump sees Ukraine as just another crisis to fix or not, an obstacle toward a normalised diplomatic and business relationship with Putin, Europeans see the future of Ukraine as fundamental. At stake, European officials and analysts say, is the key principle of European security for more than 50 years — that international borders, however they were drawn after the end of World War II, should not be changed by force.
And those countries say they are prepared to keep supporting Ukraine should the US walk away.
“My sense is that Europe understands the stakes, and that Europe will continue to support the Ukrainian government,” Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski of Poland said in an interview. “And Poland certainly will, and we’re not the only ones.”
An important core of large European countries — Poland, Germany, France, Britain, the Nordic nations and the Baltic nations — all see the security of Ukraine as vital to their own and say they are prepared to continue to aid Ukraine. Even if they cannot realistically help Ukraine drive out the Russians, they want to ensure that Ukraine can keep what it has and can continue to bleed Russia, which has spent the past six months capturing a few villages at the price of scores of thousands of troops.
Sikorski cited estimates that the war has cost Russia at least $200 billion and killed or injured almost a million Russian soldiers.
“That’s not my definition of victory,” he said.
The US provides some key elements to Ukraine, like intelligence, air defence and satellite coverage, which Europeans hope Trump will continue even if US financial support stops. Yet while “intelligence sharing is important,” Sikorski said, “that’s not a strong enough card to dictate a capitulation to Ukraine.”
Trump argues that realism requires Ukraine to give up territory.
“Most European leaders agree on the need for some sort of territorial compromise, but not one foisted on themselves and the Ukrainians,” said Camille Grand, a former senior NATO official who leads defence studies at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
The goal is to enable Ukraine to negotiate for itself an acceptable end to the war, with sufficient security assistance and assurances to deter Russia into the future, ideally with US financial and military help, though without it if necessary.
In the current US framework deal, Europe and Ukraine object especially to the proposal to recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea by force. That idea is unacceptable even to Russia’s ally, China, which has refused to recognise Russia’s annexation.
“It’s quite shocking to Europeans that the US would walk away since it has been so fundamental in solidifying European borders and security, and that drives a lot of the concern among Europeans about what comes next,” Grand said.
The proposed US framework “essentially hands Russia a victory it cannot achieve on the battlefield,” said Fabian Zuleeg, chief executive of the European Policy Centre in Brussels. “It’s an alignment with Russia, a betrayal of Ukraine and of our security.”
To recognise the Russian annexation of Crimea by force, Zuleeg said, is “a negation of the principles of European peace and puts into question the whole European security architecture since World War II.”
The European effort to convince Trump that it is Putin who stands in the way of a deal, and not President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, appears to have failed, the analysts say. Trump may indeed decide to give up on the whole problem, as he did with North Korea in his first term when the deal he had envisaged proved impossible.
Trump is correct that Ukraine is more important to Europe than to the United States, Sikorski said. “But one of our neighbours has invaded another of our neighbours, and therefore we are prepared to invest proportionally more resources, as we have been doing.”
The amount of money Ukraine requires is not enormous given Europe’s wealth — perhaps 50 billion to 60 billion euros a year (some $57 billion to $68 billion) for financial and military aid, while Europe is already intending to provide 40 billion euros this year.
Still, despite a critical mass of large countries — presumably including Germany under its new conservative chancellor — Europeans are divided in terms of practical aid to Ukraine, with some countries like Italy expressing solidarity with Ukraine but not providing much money. Some countries like France and Britain are willing to risk more for Ukraine, proposing sending European troops to provide security assurances, but may have less money to spend than Poland, say, or Germany.
And Hungary and Slovakia have little sympathy for Ukraine and essentially align themselves with Moscow.
Zuleeg is relatively optimistic. “The major powers in Europe understand the stakes for their security,” he said. And Trump has prompted new European overtures to post-Brexit Britain, to Norway and to Turkey.
“The recognition is there, unfortunately, that Trump’s actions only benefit the opponents of liberal democracy and European security,” Zuleeg said. “Countries understand that they must step in wherever they can.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.