-Analysis-
PARIS — It looks as though Ukraine is going to have to learn not to count on the United States as an ally anymore. On Wednesday, Kyiv reacted to U.S. President Donald Trump’s astonishing remarks, made a few hours earlier, which not only suggest a complete abandonment in the face of the Kremlin but also a reconciliation between Washington and Moscow.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, “with all due respect to President Donald Trump as a leader… he is living in this disinformation space.” After U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Riyadh to discuss “extraordinary opportunities existed to partner [with Russia],” Zelensky deplored “talks about Ukraine without Ukraine.”
Other meetings without Ukraine are to be expected, including one between Emmanuel Macron and Trump. The French president will be traveling to the White House “early next week,” an American official said on Wednesday. A meeting reminiscent of last December’s, when the two men also discussed Kyiv — at the time, in the presence of Zelensky.
Harsh accusations
Possibly offended, Trump then launched a series of harsh accusations against Zelensky, closely echoing the Kremlin’s rhetoric and even going so far as to call him a “dictator.” He said that Kyiv “should never have started this war,” seemingly ignoring the fact that it was Russia that invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. He also argued that Ukraine was responsible for the conflict due to its attempt to join NATO, despite the fact that its candidacy had been stalled since 2008.
Furthermore, Trump accused Ukraine of embezzling about half of the U.S. military aid, which he estimated at more than 0 billion. However, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW) calculates total U.S. aid since 2022 at 4.2 billion, with half allocated for military support. A task force from the U.S. Armed Forces Command, based in Stuttgart, Germany, is responsible for monitoring the delivery and use of U.S. aid, while a Ukrainian committee conducting its own audits is chaired by a member of the opposition.
“A break between the United States and Ukraine is looming,” says Ed Arnold of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), given these highly aggressive statements from Trump, as well as from his team, Elon Musk, and others, whose strategic logic is difficult to discern. “In any case, we are not far from a breaking point.”
Europe needs a plan
What can Ukraine do now? Should it sign a ceasefire dictated by the White House, effectively amounting to a surrender? Or should it continue fighting, relying solely on European military aid, which in fact, surpassed that of the United States over the past year?
“Europe should at least double their military aid to compensate for the loss of U.S. support,” Arnold continues. This might be enough to stabilize the front, given the state of exhaustion of the Russian forces, illustrated by the now very slow pace of their advance, but would be insufficient to reclaim lost territory. Not to mention the potential loss of access to U.S. satellite intelligence, which could have a significant impact.
Europe still lacks a coherent plan.
The need not to abandon Ukraine, or even to step up European military aid, was therefore on the agenda of the informal video conference organized by Paris on Wednesday. The meeting was attended by Canada and just about every member of the European Union who had not been invited to Monday’s meeting, which brought together Italy, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom.
But RUSI believes that Europe “still lacks a coherent plan.” Monday’s meeting was an initial test that “highlighted its divisions and its dependence on U.S. military power, exposing the weakness behind Europe’s grand rhetoric.”
“Zelensky better move fast or he is not going to have a country left,” Trump warned, a typical example of his use of dramatic statements as a destabilization or negotiation tactic. His envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, will have a tough time explaining this in Kyiv, where he arrived on Wednesday with the stated intention of having “substantial talks” with Zelensky. His mission, he said, is to “sit and listen. And say, hey, what are your concerns?” The Ukrainian president, in response, assured that he would “take him to the front so he could see the war firsthand.”
