The fight is by no means over, with the head of the E.U. Commission announcing plans to strengthen Europe’s defense industry and drastically increase military capabilities.
MOSCOW — From where President Vladimir Putin is sitting, it looks like Russia is now winning a yearslong struggle with the United States and the West. And the result may be more war.
President Donald Trump’s announcement overnight that the United States would immediately halt military aid to Ukraine was welcomed by the Kremlin on Tuesday, and his decision appears to vindicate Putin’s visceral dislike of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Meanwhile, the White House’s growing differences with NATO, the 32-member U.S.-led military alliance set up to counter the Soviet Union after World War II, and apparent rapprochement with Russia are fracturing the Western liberal order that for decades contained Putin’s ambitions.
The fight is by no means over.
Hours after Trump’s announcement on Ukraine, European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced plans to strengthen Europe’s defense industry and increase military capabilities by freeing close to 800 billion euros ($841.4 billion).
“We’re living in the most momentous and dangerous of times,” she said in a statement. “We are in an era of rearmament.”
Trump and Putin at a summit in the central Vietnamese city of Danang in 2017.Mikhail Klimentyev / Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images file
Putin himself hasn’t commented on the recent events exposing the deepening fissures between the U.S. and the liberal coalition it has led for decades. Others in the Kremlin have been guarded, if positive.
The West has “begun to partially lose its unity,” Putin spokesman Dimitry Peskov said Monday, calling the moment Zelenskyy was publicly berated by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance a “fragmentation.”
Russia’s TV network bosses, whose coverage mirror Kremlin talking points, agreed, and Friday’s Oval Office spat and interviews with Trump administration officials have run constantly on Russian television.
Peskov quickly reworked the Kremlin’s long-standing anti-Zelenskyy talking points to fit the moment.
“Zelenskyy largely demonstrated a complete lack of diplomatic skills,” Peskov said. And in blaming Ukraine’s “refusal to acknowledge the real situation on the ground,” he repeated another popular Russian propaganda point.
Zelenskyy was at the White House on Friday to sign a deal with Trump that would grant the U.S. access to rare earths and other critical minerals in Ukraine after the war with Russia ends.
Trump has said the deal would serve as a security guarantee for Ukraine against a future Russian invasion, like the one that started the war in February 2022. Zelenskyy pressed for more explicit guarantees, saying that Putin could not be trusted to live by any agreement he signs.
The deal remained unsigned after the extraordinary encounter.
But a deal with Russia is also moving slowly, despite warming ties with the U.S. under Trump, including a 90-minuted conversation between Putin and Trump and a meeting between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Saudi Arabia. The latest U.S.-Russia talks in Istanbul were narrowly focused on re-establishing diplomatic relations, with Putin likely seeing an opportunity to gain more on the battlefield in Ukraine.
And last week, the U.S. extended sanctions against Russia — an indication that the Trump administration wants a ceasefire before any economic normalization.
In 2014, after Putin occupied and annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the international community slapped sanctions on Russia. Russia followed this by invading in 2022, and subsequently occupying 20% of Ukraine, which has prompted further sanctions.
A sign that the current turnaround in relations with the U.S. is about much more than Ukraine is the appointment last month of Kirill Dmitriev as Moscow’s special envoy on international economic and investment cooperation. Dmitriev, whose role is to focus on removing sanctions and opening up trade with America, attended talks in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh in February.
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Meanwhile, Putin is closer than ever to his war aim of removing Zelenskyy from power.
An interview that Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., did Sunday with NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” in which he suggested that Zelenskyy “needs to come to his senses and come back to the table in gratitude or someone else needs to lead the country to do that,” has been replayed on Russian media.
And national security adviser Mike Waltz and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., also suggested that Zelenskyy might need to step down to secure a ceasefire.
Polling in Ukraine, however, shows that the democratically elected Zelenskyy remains popular among his own people. He was also greeted warmly by European leaders, some of whom met him at a summit in London on Sunday.
After the summit, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced billions in support for Ukraine, including a loan of 2.2 billion British pounds ($2.8 billion) to support the country, funded through the freezing of Russian assets.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday thanked British Foreign Secretary David Lammy for his country’s role in encouraging Europe to provide for its own defense and push for peace in Ukraine, the State Department said.
Starmer has said he is “ready and willing” to put British troops on the ground in Ukraine to help guarantee its security as part of an international effort to support a peace deal.
Europe, under pressure to unify and deal with an emboldened Russia, is unlikely to quickly make up the difference after U.S. military aid stops flowing to Ukraine and without a U.S. so-called backstop, or security and military guarantees to enforce any deal with the Kremlin. Europe is considering using 200 billion euros ($211 billion) in seized Russian assets to aid Ukraine.
For Russia’s government, this most likely looks like an opportunity to widen the split in the Atlantic alliance, another key war aim.
The Kremlin posted a picture of the European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Germany’s outgoing chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
“Here are leaders who are organizing opposition to Trump and Putin,” read a caption underneath.
In an interview with the state-run Tass news agency on Sunday, Lavrov said the U.S. “openly says it wants to end the conflict in Ukraine, but Europe insists on keeping the party going in the form of war.”
Putin will be determined to capitalize on the warming of Russian relations with the U.S. while knowing his own negotiations with Washington are just beginning.
Russian officials will also be wary of an unpredictable Trump administration determined to get its own way. Putin, meanwhile, is signaling he will not retreat on the battlefield.
So even as the U.S. pauses military support for Ukraine, the Kremlin remains focused on fighting, and Trump’s promise of a quick ceasefire looks less likely than ever.
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