European leaders who have been strongly supporting keeping the Ukraine war going have been dealt a serious blow by President Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Most of them must be in shock, gasping for breath.
Let’s start with Hegseth. He made the following declarations:
1. Ukraine’s membership in NATO is off the table. Ukraine won’t be invited to join NATO.
2. The US will not send any troops to Ukraine for any reason, including peacekeeping.
3. The US will no longer supply or pay for weapons and support for Ukraine. It will be up to the European NATO members to provide support to Ukraine.
4. While the US supports NATO, American participation has to be fair and equitable, meaning that NATO members will have to significantly increase their contributions.
5. Ukraine will not be able to go back to the borders it had before 2014, meaning that the US expects important territorial concessions from Ukraine.
President Trump, meanwhile, held an hour-and-a-half phone meeting with Russian President Putin. The key takeaway is that Putin said he is willing to start negotiations with the United States on Ukraine and other security issues.
The Trump-Putin conversation covered many topics, for example: security issues, energy, artificial intelligence and “the power of the dollar.”
Following the call, Trump apparently placed a call “to inform” Ukrainian President Zelensky of his conversation with Putin. He also immediately set up his negotiating team. He designated Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and Ambassador and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to lead the negotiations.
Significantly, the list of participants did not include retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg. Kellogg had been openly flogging the idea of significantly increasing sanctions on Russia as a way to get concessions on Ukraine. As he put it, on a scale of one to 10, current sanctions on Russia are only a three. He proposed raising them far higher (assuming this could be done).
These comments directly undermined Trump’s approach to Putin and Russia, and appear to have been Kellogg’s idea (among others) to make sure the Ukraine war continued. Whether Kellogg will again appear as a player in Ukraine remains to be seen.
It will take time for Europe’s pro-war leaders, along with the EU, to contemplate the future, now that the rug has pretty well been pulled out from under their feet.
The Europeans have neither the weapons, the troops nor the money to keep the war going in Ukraine. Nor will they get much support for continuing the war if the United States won’t play in the game. In fact, should Europe want to continue on its own, without the United States, it would risk the future of the NATO alliance.
Many of the leaders in Europe are in trouble domestically. Germany, France, Poland – and even Romania, where Presidential elections were canceled to prevent the leading opposition candidate from being elected – are examples of the growing instability in the European leadership class.
Revelations about US and EU interference in the electoral process in Georgia, Serbia and Slovakia, perhaps also Moldova, emphasize the squalid nature of current-day politics in Europe.
The Trump administration is liquidating USAID, which has been acting as a sort of CIA-front in many of the above countries, including Ukraine. With that source of money and support cut off, the EU is being handed a serious problem that goes well beyond finance. The phony argument that the EU (and, with it, NATO) is upholding democracy is now exposed. The loss of legitimacy is a real threat to the ruling elites.
Trump has an important geopolitical perspective. It runs something like this: European security is important but it is not really threatened by Russia. The US faces a resurgent China that has a (largely Western-supplied) very modern industrial base, a massive workforce and an increasingly well-equipped and powerful military.
From Trump’s point of view, he needs a more friendly Russia that can help balance global power relationships. To get there he needs to find ways to redefine the US-Russia relationship, which is in deep disarray and infused with mutual hostility. In his 90-minute conversation with Putin, Trump was poking at economic and technology capabilities that could, in future, provide a basis for improving relations.
No one can say right now whether a deal can be found for Ukraine, but there is reason to be more optimistic that the two sides can work something out.
We will need to see if the Europeans push back and try to sabotage a deal on Ukraine. The reality is that Europe has little it can do if Putin and Trump agree on a deal.
Stephen Bryen is a special correspondent to Asia Times and former US deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. This article, which originally appeared on his Substack newsletter Weapons and Strategy, is republished with permission.
