The rift between Europe and the United States over Russia’s war on Ukraine has plunged to a new depth as Donald Trump doubles down on his embrace of Vladimir Putin, jolting an alliance that was already treading on thin ice.
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Over just two striking weeks, the US president has struck a diesel deal with his Russian counterpart, eased economic sanctions on Moscow, called for new elections in Ukraine and dismissed the legitimacy of its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom Trump said was “more difficult to deal with” than Putin.
Zelenskyy, increasingly defiant, has denounced the diesel deal as a “historic mistake” and cautioned that other US-Russian agreements related to gas flows, banking, chemicals and the immobilised assets would be next in line.
Ukraine has identified sudden limits on the use of the Starlink satellite technology and US-made weapons deliveries.
“I believe steps have been taken to convince Ukraine to capitulate,” Zelenskyy told Bloomberg in remarks that revived the long-running dread that Trump and Putin would conspire to thrash out a backroom deal that ends in Kyiv’s surrender.
Moscow’s pitch for a trilateral meeting with Putin, Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping further fuelled those fears.
“I would do it. Not so much for Ukraine, because Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine,” Trump said when asked about the trilateral.
The rapid succession of events has caught Europeans off guard, who, after previous setbacks, believed they had learned to navigate Trump’s unilateral style of diplomacy.
Once again, they find themselves blindsided and undercut by a close ally that is willing to make overtures to Russia without demanding a single concession in return.
“We want to leave no doubt about our position towards Ukraine, and at the same time, we know that the Americans have other interests,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said last week at the end of a two-day summit in Brussels.
In a swipe at Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron denounced the “ambiguities” of some leaders and warned: “Capitulation is weakness. Weakness is danger.”
Italy’s Giorgia Meloni deplored the diesel deal as a “very risky choice” that legitimises Moscow and weakens sanctions. Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen lamented that “we, the Western alliance, are in a worse position now than we were a few days ago”.
On Tuesday, High Representative Kaja Kallas upped the anteand explicitly accused the US of pushing Ukraine to “surrender on Putin’s terms”.
Conscious coupling
Yet despite the criticism and widespread indignation, Europe remains unwilling and perhaps unprepared to break away from Trump and pursue an independent course.
Brussels, Berlin, Paris and London still prefer to maintain an active, even if precarious, channel with Washington to influence its thinking as much as possible, as shown in their participation in the latest round of US-led peace talks in Miami and later in Oslo.
“Europe will live with the consequences, and that’s why we need to see a more unified Europe at the table,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said.
For Kyiv, the European presence has become indispensable to offset the White House’s Russian-friendly slant. Zelenskyy has repeatedly encouraged Europe to develop a parallel channel with Russia, but Moscow has shown no interest.
Though Trump’s latest actions prove the European push has been limited at best, the thinking remains unchanged: the seat at the table must be preserved at all costs.
“We have to move forward, because we also know cooperation with the US is essential for Ukraine to fight its war. Everybody knows the volumes that are part of the diesel deal are low,” a senior diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“So keep calm and carry on. Deplore and continue. But no over-dramatisation either. That’s in none of our interests.”
Some officials find reassurance in the belief that Trump’s rapprochement with Putin is largely motivated by a desire to deflect responsibility for high fuel prices ahead of next month’s midterm elections, in which opinion polls show his Republican Party will lose.
Trump claims that Ukraine’s successful strikes on Russia’s oil refineries are to blame, but energy experts agree his war on Iran is the chief culprit of the oil market turmoil.
“We have dialogue, and we’ll continue to have dialogue. It has taken us to positive results in what our interests are concerned,” a senior official said. “This is the best way.”
Yet there is a growing recognition that Europe and the US have fundamentally diverged in their approaches to Russia, with differences that may prove impossible to reconcile.
Europe, for now, bets on sanctions to cripple the war machine, long-term decoupling to avoid vulnerable dependencies and strict diplomatic isolation. Although some far-right and far-left parties question this logic, the strategy is widely shared.
The US, by contrast, is dangling economic incentives for Russia to engage in the peace negotiations. These reportedly involve an early partial release of sovereign assets and the resumption of gas flows to Europe, both of which Europe has already rejected. Deals related to Lukoil and nuclear technology are also said to be in the works.
European officials contend the American approach is flawed because it ignores Putin’s fixation with territorial conquest, the core reason why he launched the invasion. No deal, however lucrative, can replace Ukraine’s annihilation in Putin’s mind, they say.
Washington’s invitation to Putin for the G20 summit in Florida, which a dozen European leaders are scheduled to attend, is another sign of glaring discrepancy.
As Trump moves closer to Putin, the ideological gap between the two sides of the Atlantic is unlikely to narrow any time soon. If anything, it could deepen even further, raising serious questions about what might happen when the peace process reaches the endgame and allies are called to make joint decisions of exceptional significance.
Maria Shagina, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, says the White House’s actions are designed to pressure Europe into relinquishing its pressure front and accommodating the US stance on Russia.
“The more fundamental question is whether Europe can sustain an independent sanctions strategy over the longer term. The EU and the UK retain considerable economic leverage over Russia, but can they translate that leverage into effective and sustained pressure on Moscow without US participation?” Shagina told Euronews.
“The challenge is not simply whether Europe possesses sufficient economic power, but whether it has the political will, institutional capacity and strategic coherence to deploy that power independently of Washington, something that until now has been inconceivable.”
