Trump, Putin and the weakening of Europe
In war, even the idea of a truce becomes hostage to confrontation. The conflict in Ukraine has also descended into a war of ceasefires; of unfulfilled announcements; of supposed promises of a truce that coincide with attacks on the ground. On Saturday, Vladimir Putin unexpectedly announced a two-day pause for Easter, and Volodymyr Zelensky joined in. But since then, both Kiev and Moscow have denounced hundreds of ceasefire violations on the war front. With the United States threatening to withdraw from the conflict if there is no progress in negotiations, the offer of a truce has become just another maneuver to curry favor with a gesture-hungry Donald Trump.
More than a month ago, in the negotiations the US administration held in Saudi Arabia, Ukraine had already agreed to a 30-day unconditional ceasefire, but then Moscow not only failed to support it but actually intensified its bombing. On April 13, the Russian attack on Sumi, a city in northern Ukraine far from the war front, left the worst massacre of Ukrainian civilians in 2025.
But the unconditional willingness Zelensky showed Riyadh managed, in turn, to reopen the channels of negotiation between Kiev and Washington after the Transatlantic tragedy. Now it is Putin who is using this offer of a symbolic truce to give a helping hand to a Donald Trump frustrated by the lack of progress on the ground and willing to embark on another negotiation with the Tehran regime over the future of Iran's nuclear program, weakened regionally and economically.
Amid so much diplomatic posturing, the United States has also resumed dialogue with the Europeans, last Thursday in Paris and this week in London. Europe is working hard to strengthen its own sphere of influence, aware that its security depends on the outcome of the war in Ukraine but also on the management of the uncertainties that the new US administration entails. Especially since, despite Washington's distorted figures, 60% of aid to Ukraine is European. While Trump talks about negotiating with Russia, France and Great Britain are seeking to strengthen a coalition of Western forces that can offer security guarantees in Ukraine.
Since Trump's return to power, the European Union has become a pressure cooker of contradictory political agendas, forced to act and understand each other on a multitude of fronts. While London and Paris continue with the plan to assemble a "stabilization force" of some 25,000 soldiers that could be deployed far from the front line in Ukraine if an agreement is reached, other capitals are prioritizing the immediate future of relations with Washington over Kiev. That's why Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni acted as a mediator with Trump last week, to the point of self-censoring herself in the English translation of his response in which he had stated that the war in Ukraine had "clearly" originated from the Russian invasion. "Italy will be the most distorting element in Europe after Hungary because they are very aligned with Trump," asserts a former European diplomat, highlighting the level of mistrust that prevails in the Council of the Union.
However, the EU is doomed to face a transatlantic weakening that could last a long time. This is a flaw that goes beyond Donald Trump's aggressive rhetoric and global vision. The international order has changed to such an extent that the Eurocentric outlook of many European Union capitals makes it difficult to gauge the situation. With the United States in retreat and Europe, through its inability, gradually disappearing from the global map, China is offering itself as a guarantee of stability in a world that has not forgotten that, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was Beijing, and to a lesser extent Moscow, that guaranteed supply. For much of the world, Ukraine is merely a European problem. A distant conflict in global dynamics that, above all, are dependent on the confrontation between China and the United States.
The Twenty-Seven are forced to come to an understanding when the security of the European continent is decided in negotiations led by a president who rejects international agreements, who views cooperation and shared governance as a sign of fragility, and who endorses geographic expansionism and the imposition of the law of the most fused. Donald Trump's transactional world is made up of winners and losers, and it is in this context that the weakening of Europe is almost—and for different reasons—a shared objective of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.