Trump changes sides

We don’t know the details of Donald Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine, but, after a disastrous week for transatlantic relations, we can say that it is a failure for the Ukrainian people, for Europe and for international law. The bullying ceremony with which the White House received President Zelenskiy on Friday culminated a drift marked by a historic milestone: Monday’s votes at the United Nations, when Washington and Moscow exhibited a new alliance in which Trump openly aligns himself with the Putin regime vis-à-vis the European Union and democratic countries. The change of the United States’ position regarding those who, for 80 years, have been its allies starts with the acceptance of the arguments invented by the Kremlin to justify the invasion.

Donald Trump and his Vice-President J. D. Vance’s aggressive and arrogant attitudes have been enough to spoil the efforts of several European leaders and Ukrainian diplomacy to reach a fair cease-fire agreement. As much as Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer deployed all their diplomatic skills this week in their visits to the White House, the fruits of prudence have gone down the drain in the face of the anger aroused in the Republican president by Zelenskiy’s courage in his defense of the truth. Namely, that it was Russia that started the war and that it will be of little use for Kyiv to make a pact with Moscow without the guarantee that Putin will fulfill the agreement. The done deal policy that Trump is trying to impose on Zelenskiy looks very much like a blank check for the Russian leader.

The disaster we have witnessed this week is even deeper than the gap between Trump and Vance’s hubris and Zelenskiy’s polite sincerity. Trump’s plan began in the worst possible way: with the handing over to Russia of all the bargaining chips. The urgency exhibited by the White House contrasts with the Kremlin’s parsimony, in no hurry to end a war of attrition that will always be expensive for a democratic contender and cheap for a dictatorship.

Everything Putin demanded seems ready to be granted by Trump: Ukraine will not join NATO, Russia will annex the occupied provinces and there will be no US soldiers on Ukrainian territory. In addition, sanctions will be lifted on Russia, which will rejoin the G-7. As it did on Monday at the UN, Washington will defend Moscow in international forums during the process. Rehabilitation of the invader versus humiliation of the invaded.

Only one mechanism ensures Kyiv’s compliance: the agreement on the joint exploitation of Ukraine’s mineral resources prepared by the White House, an extortion that Zelenskiy is willing to accept in exchange for only one counterpart: the guarantee that Putin will not break the cease-fire under threat of retaliation by Europeans and Americans. All the efforts by Macron, Starmer and Zelenskiy were aimed at this goal of maintaining a thread of transatlantic connection that would prevent Russia from using peace to rearm and, as on other occasions, continue its expansionism. Even that does not seem possible.

If nothing changes in Washington, it is now up to Europe to provide the guarantee that Ukraine needs, sparing no expense or risk, something that will inevitably have repercussions on the lives of Europeans. The tone of the meeting that the British Prime Minister has called for this Sunday in London with the leaders of the continent will give the measure of whether, at last, a public acknowledgement is made of the loneliness in which the US leaves Ukraine and Europe in the face of Putin and the essential political discourse, aimed at a public opinion that must be aware of the profound change that the world, their world, is undergoing.