Donald Trump’s push to strike a deal between Russia and Ukraine has rattled Europeans and stoked fears their security will be irreparably weakened.
Donald Trump wants to strike a deal to end Russia’s war on Ukraine. What could possibly go wrong? For Europe, just about everything, it seems.
More than a week after the American president held an out-of-the-blue call with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and announced the immediate start of negotiations, European allies are still trying to find their footing in the chain of events, which is moving with vertiginous speed.
The fact the phone call was uncoordinated with the other side of the Atlantic and caught everybody by surprise set the stage for what followed: a flurry of reactive statements, bitter recriminations, and last-minute meetings to close ranks and reclaim Europe’s place in the haphazard diplomatic process.
“If there is an agreement made behind our backs, it will simply not work,” said Kaja Kallas, the EU’s High Representative. “You need the Europeans to implement this deal.”
The White House, however, was unfazed. Trump then sent a delegation to Saudi Arabia for the first high-level talks with Russian officials in over three years. The two sides agreed to “normalise” bilateral relations and appoint dedicated teams to advance negotiations on the future of Ukraine, which was not invited to the meeting.
Kallas reacted with a warning: “Russia will try to divide us. Let’s not walk into their traps.”
Her words encapsulate the foreboding feeling spreading across the continent, which fears its long-term security now hinges on the designs of one single man.
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of reasons why Europe is on total edge.
A (very) bad deal
Europe was well aware of Donald Trump’s admiration for Vladimir Putin. The Republican once called the Russian president a “genius” and described his decision to launch the full-scale invasion as a “big mistake” that “looked like a great negotiation.”
Now back in the White House, Trump has doubled – and tripled – down on his flattering rhetoric to the point of replicating the Kremlin’s talking points. After Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy complained about this country’s exclusion from the Saudi Arabia meeting, Trump lashed out by blaming the war on the aggressed rather than on the aggressor.
“You’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it three years (ago). You should have never started it,” he told reporters.
Zelenskyy replied that Trump “unfortunately lives in a disinformation space”, which Trump followed by calling Zelenskyy a “dictator without elections,” prompting international outrage. (Ukraine’s constitution forbids holding elections under martial law.)
The charged words cast serious doubts over Trump’s ability (or willingness) to be an impartial, fair moderator between the two parties. Russia comes to the table with a stronger negotiating hand, as it has a larger army, economy and territory than Ukraine, which is staring down at a decades-long reconstruction effort of colossal price.
If Trump, from the get-go, takes Russia’s side, the balance will be irreversibly tilted against Zelenskyy. This will allow Putin to secure most, if not all, of the Ukrainian territory that Russian forces have occupied, estimated at about 20% of the country’s land.
The White House has already said Ukraine’s desired return to pre-2014 borders and membership in NATO are “unrealistic” goals that should be excluded from any settlement with Russia. The American position aligns with the Kremlin’s thinking, which has used Kyiv’s plan to join the military alliance as a pretext to justify the full-scale invasion.
ADVERTISEMENTMarco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, has warned that “concessions” would have to be made “by all sides”. So far, the Trump administration has put the burden on Ukraine.
Europeans now fear Trump, seeking the PR win of a peace broker, will force Ukraine to accept first, a rushed ceasefire and, then, a highly disadvantageous agreement.
After attending an emergency summit in Paris, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez insisted any deal should avoid the “same mistakes” from the past and result in a “false sense of closure” that the Kremlin could exploit to continue its imperialistic agenda.
“This is not the time that Putin’s Russia annexes territories that aren’t its own,” he said.
ADVERTISEMENTHis Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, was blunter: “A forced capitulation of Ukraine would mean a capitulation of the whole community of the West. With all the consequences of this fact. And let no one pretend that they don’t see this.”
Draconian terms
On the global stage, Trump has built a reputation for pursuing transactional diplomacy that emulates his past dealings as a real estate mogul in Manhattan. Recently, he pitched an outlandish plan to take over the devastated Gaza Strip and turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East,” displacing almost 2 million Palestinians in the process.
With Ukraine, he does not want only peace. He also wants business.
Earlier this month, the president dispatched his Secretary of Treasury, Scott Bessent, to Kyiv to present an agreement giving America access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, which Zelenskyy previously touted as leverage to secure Trump’s support, convince American companies to set shop in Ukraine and deter a new Russian attack.
ADVERTISEMENTBut what Bessent put on the table left Ukranians flabbergasted.
According to The Telegraph, which obtained a copy of the agreement, the US proposed a 50% share of revenues from extraction, a 50% share value of “all new licenses issued to third parties” and a “right of first refusal” on exports to other countries. The deal would be governed by New York law and cover access to Ukraine’s minerals, oil, gas, ports and “other infrastructure (as agreed),” meaning it could go even further.
The newspaper described the deal as “colonisation” and the terms as “worse than the financial penalties imposed on Germany and Japan after their defeat in 1945”.
Zelenskyy rejected the proposal for failing to protect Ukraine’s interests and providing security guarantees against Russia. But Trump is unlikely to give up: he has vowed to obtain $500 billion worth of critical materials as a sort of payback for American aid.
ADVERTISEMENTRelinquishing such a sum would severely imperil Ukraine’s rebuilding and force Europe to pick an even larger share of the bill. Remarkably, Trump’s stated figure is almost equal to the estimated cost of Ukraine’s recovery: $486 billion over the next decade.
An inconvenient seat
One of the most obvious reasons why Europe is in a state of panic over Trump’s negotiations is because it has been left out of them.
The American president held his call with Putin without previously consulting with Western allies, tearing apart the unified front that had isolated the Russian leader for almost three years. Announcing the start of talks, Trump made sure to frame the process as an exclusively three-men format: Putin, Zelenskyy and himself.
Keith Kellogg, the US Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, later confirmed Europe would lack a seat at the negotiating table and simply be consulted throughout the process.
ADVERTISEMENTThe comments sent shockwaves through the continent: Europe is the largest supplier of assistance to Ukraine (€132 billion compared to €114 billion from America) and sees its future intrinsically linked to the country’s stability. Deciding one decides the other.
“Europe’s security is at a turning point. Yes, it is about Ukraine – but it is also about us,” said Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission.
“Ukraine must always be included,” said French President Emmanuel Macron. “The security concerns of Europeans must be taken into account.”
Adding to worry was Marco Rubio’s suggestion that the EU would only be invited to the table when the time comes to grant sanctions relief for the Kremlin, deepening the impression the bloc is treated like a passive viewer rather than an active player.
ADVERTISEMENTRubio’s position is at odds with the EU’s official goal of making Russia pay for its aggression. Brussels recently rolled out a multi-billion loan for Kyiv using Russia’s frozen assets as collateral. If the money were to be released, as the Kremlin has pushed for, the loan would fall apart and leave capitals liable for repayments.
For Nicolai von Ondarza, a senior researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), the public pronouncements of the Trump administration regarding Ukraine already amount to a worst-case scenario for Europe.
“Not only is the US trying to negotiate about the European security architecture without the Europeans but is also giving Russia major diplomatic victories before the negotiations even have started by publically accepting all of Russia’s talking points,” von Ondarza said.
“This is a maximum challenge. They (European allies) will both have to demonstrate the strength in support of Ukraine, enabling it to say ‘no’ to any Russian-American deal, and urgently invest in their own defence.”
ADVERTISEMENTLeft alone with the work
If being left out of the negotiating table was not alarming enough, what might come next for Europeans could easily surpass it.
The Trump administration has sent out a questionnaire to European capitals enquiring about their willingness to deploy a military mission to safeguard the prospective peace deal. At the same time, though, US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth made it clear his country would not commit boots on the ground and that any peacekeeping mission “should not be covered” by NATO’s Article 5 of collective defence.
After the summit in Paris, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared his intention to send soldiers to Ukraine alongside other nations if a settlement were to be found. But, he pointedly added that “there must be a US backstop because a US security guarantee is the only way to effectively deter Russia from attacking Ukraine again.”
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said her country was “open-minded” to the peacekeeping idea but noted American involvement would be needed to make it work. “One very important thing is how are the Americans going to view these questions,” she said. “Are they going to back up Europeans in case of boots on the ground?”
ADVERTISEMENTBy contrast, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the debate was “completely premature” and Donald Tusk insisted its troops were needed to protect the border with Belarus.
The disagreements reflect the growing despair among Europeans as they contemplate a hard pill to swallow: the US will lead negotiations on the deal and then Europe, after being left outside the room, will be asked to make the deal work, mostly on its own and mostly without NATO’s security umbrella.
Irreparably weaker
Adding to Europe’s anxiety is the fact that, regardless of whether a deal is struck between Zelenskyy, Putin and Trump, the US is poised to gradually reduce its military presence in the continent, which dates back to the Cold War era, when Washington was hell-bent on preventing the expansion of the Soviet Union.
Since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022, the number of American troops stationed in Europe has surged to about 100,000. However, according to Pete Hegseth, the US will no longer be “primarily” focused on Europe and instead turn to the Pacific Region to deter war with China, and to the border with Mexico to curb irregular migration.
ADVERTISEMENT“You can’t make an assumption that America’s presence will last forever,” Hegseth said during his first visit to Poland, NATO’s leader in defence spending per GDP.
The prospect of Europe being asked to safeguard a fragile, possibly untenable settlement between Ukraine and Russia while the US gradually pulls out its soldiers from European soil appears to be a recipe for disaster that leaders are anxious to prevent.
“There must be no division of security and responsibilities between Europe and the US, which means that NATO is based on the fact that we always act together and are at risk together and guarantee our security through this,” Olaf Scholz said.
“That must not be called into question. We must keep that in mind,” he added.
ADVERTISEMENTDonald Tusk said: “Without the support of the United States, it is difficult to imagine effective guaranteeing of security, so this cooperation is actually a necessity.”
America’s absence risks creating a strategic opening for Putin to fulfill his hard-fought objective of tearing apart the transatlantic alliance, which has, until now, acted as the main bastion against his fixation to reassert Russia’s sphere of influence.
The events of February 2025 might be remembered as “the real turning point” when America’s security interest became “fundamentally different” from Europe’s, says Jana Puglierin, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“Trump could make concessions that Biden refused to make in December 2021, for example on the stationing of American troops and weapons systems in Eastern Europe or a Russian veto on further NATO enlargement,” Puglierin said. “Europe risks to stand powerless on the sidelines as the foundations of European security collapse.”
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