The world appears to have dodged a bullet. Donald Trump and team are walking back from their latest and most outlandish proposal for peace in Ukraine. American and Ukrainian negotiators meeting in Geneva are working to revise the plan, and U.S. and European officials have agreed to meet separately to discuss its implications for NATO and the European Union. The outcome of these talks is unknown, and it’s hard to imagine a deal that will satisfy all parties—the Russian, Ukrainian, and European positions remain starkly at odds. But whatever the result, some things are already clear—including three lessons for the U.S. and Europe.  

Kyiv and its European allies have long feared that Trump would betray Ukraine by using U.S. leverage to impose an unfair, unrealistic peace settlement modeled on a real estate deal—splitting the difference between two sides, in this case, a rapacious aggressor and its much smaller neighbor struggling to defend itself. In fact, the 28-point peace plan leaked last week was far worse than that. It didn’t even pretend to split the difference. With a few minor exceptions, Moscow got everything it wanted, and Ukraine got nothing. The deal rewarded the aggressor and pummeled the victim, strengthening a voracious Russia while enriching the U.S.  

But Washington wasn’t just betraying Ukraine—the proposed deal would also be disastrous for Europe. With Ukraine sidelined—its large, experienced army and cutting-edge weapons neutered—nothing would stand between Europe and Russia, now armed to the teeth, invigorated by four years of war, and openly hungry to reclaim more of what it considers its historic sphere of influence. 

The American and Ukrainian negotiators who met in Geneva this weekend have reportedly made substantial changes to the original plan. Other significant issues need to be settled by direct talks between Trump and Zelensky. 

But it’s hard to see Vladimir Putin agreeing to a modified plan. He has made clear for months that his position is unchangeable, and he is unlikely to accept anything less than Trump’s original outline. “If Kyiv doesn’t want to discuss the proposals,” the Russian strongman announced last week, “that’s fine with us, as it leads to achieving the goals of the special military operation by force.” In other words, back to business as usual in Ukraine, with a long, bloody winter ahead. 

The original proposal, negotiated by special envoy Steve Witkoff with input from Putin’s close associate Kirill Dmitriev, mandates a long list of draconian concessions from Ukraine—ultimatums that could threaten its existence as a nation. Its armed forces would be cut by one-third, from some 900,000 troops to 600,000. Russia would be allowed to keep not just the territory it has seized over nearly 12 years of savage fighting, but also a large swathe of Ukraine it has been unable to conquer—a strategic high ground roughly the size of Delaware.  

Kyiv would be required to renounce joining NATO, and NATO would have to promise to stop expanding, barring all other prospective members anywhere in the world. Russian officials would receive amnesty for their war crimes—an unmistakable signal to other aspiring aggressors in the Middle East and Asia. Western sanctions on Russia would be lifted, and Moscow would be invited to rejoin the Group of Seven advanced industrial countries.  

Among the proposal’s most jarring provisions—telltale signs of Trump’s true motives—are commercial. The centerpiece of the plan, Russia’s ultimate reward, is “reintegration into the global economy,” and the principal means to this end—surprise, surprise—is a long-term “economic cooperation agreement” with the U.S. The blueprint spares no detail about what Team Trump envisions: “mutually beneficial” deals on “energy, natural resources, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data centers, rare earth metal extraction projects in the Arctic, and other . . . corporate opportunities.”  

Meanwhile, Washington would effectively seize the nearly $300 billion in Russian assets frozen by the West shortly after the 2022 invasion—all but about $5 billion of it sitting in banks under European jurisdiction. The European Union has been negotiating a plan to leverage these assets to help Ukraine win the war and rebuild its battered cities. But the Trump plan would plow the money into American-led investment funds for Russia and Ukraine, with significant revenue flowing back to Washington. The plan also provides for the U.S. to collect a fee for any activity it undertakes to secure the peace agreement. 

But even that is not the worst of it. By far the most onerous provisions of the proposal are those that pretend to guarantee the future security of Ukraine and Europe. Not only would Kyiv be severely weakened, but no NATO or other European troops would be allowed to help keep peace in Ukraine after a ceasefire. That would be left, astonishingly, to the U.S. and Russia. “A joint American-Russian working group on security issues will be established,” the document states, “to promote and ensure compliance with all provisions of this agreement.”  

As for the Russian threat to Europe—a threat increasingly taken seriously by intelligence agencies across the continent—the plan says virtually nothing about it. One laughable provision, ignoring decades of treaty violations by Putin and associates, commits Russia to “enshrine in law its policy of non-aggression towards Europe and Ukraine”—as if the law, domestic or international, means anything to Moscow. “It is expected,” another bullet point suggests meekly, “that Russia will not invade neighboring countries.”  

Washington originally gave Ukraine until Thursday to approve the deal, threatening severe repercussions if Kyiv declined. The Trump administration is no longer sending weaponry to Ukraine, but it still supplies arms indirectly by selling them to Europe—and that would surely have come to an end. Even more dire for Kyiv, the U.S. could stop sharing the intelligence that has sustained Ukraine’s fighting capacity since the beginning of the war.  

The U.S. provides information on incoming Russian missiles, covert activities, battlefield movements, and long-range targets deep inside enemy territory. Much of the American and European weaponry vital to Ukrainian operations would cease functioning without U.S. intelligence and software updates. Challenges would emerge immediately and worsen over time as the information provided in the past grew increasingly stale. Most troubling, unlike with most types of weaponry, there is no European substitute for what the U.S. supplies. 

But even if Trump were to insist on the toughest provisions, Volodymyr Zelensky could still walk away from the deal. Even after four years of brutal war, Ukrainians are in no mood to surrender. And if it’s Putin who walks, Team Trump could pivot again—they’ve done that before. There’s no predicting, and the negotiations are likely to drag on for days. 

Still, even now, three lessons stand out. 

The first and most apparent is a warning to the White House. Steve Witkoff isn’t just an amateur with shockingly little knowledge of Ukraine or Russia. He’s also dangerously credulous and, after four friendly visits to Moscow, appears to be under the influence of one of the world’s shrewdest manipulators. Trump is also vulnerable to Putin’s wiles—far too vulnerable. But Witkoff is in a different league—all but taking dictation from a self-proclaimed enemy of the West. The president should rein in his special envoy or restrict his remit before his naive bumbling results in real harm to the U.S. and its allies.  

The second lesson should be familiar to anyone who’s been watching the war in Ukraine. Putin will not settle for anything short of his long-standing maximalist demands. He doesn’t want peace. He doesn’t want to compromise with Kyiv. He wants total victory—the subjugation of Ukraine, the dismantling of NATO, vindication of his belief that might makes right, and that international borders are meaningless. That’s why he likes the Witkoff plan—it opens the door to almost all of that.  

What Trump and Witkoff still don’t seem to grasp: even with this plan in place, Putin is unlikely to stop until he gets everything he wants—most likely through resumed aggression in Ukraine and Europe. The only way to end the conflict is to persuade him he can’t achieve his ends, no matter how long he continues fighting—and the West must stay the course until he understands he can’t win.  

The third and sharpest lesson of the week is for Europe. Most continental leaders grasp the threat Witkoff put into play, and they know it goes beyond Ukraine. “Wars cannot be ended by great powers over the heads of the affected countries,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared over the weekend. “If Ukraine were to lose this war and then, most probably, collapse, that would also have consequences for the whole of European politics.”  

Most European effort since the deal was leaked has focused on getting through to Trump—securing a seat at the negotiating table and modifying the plan. That may be worth trying. It’s a tactic that succeeded in the past, including in the wake of the Anchorage summit in August—and Europeans are acutely aware that neither they nor Ukraine can afford to alienate Trump completely.  

But the near success of the Witkoff plan should alarm Europe, sparking a sense of urgency in Brussels and other European capitals. European leaders see the growing threat from Russia. They’ve watched with mounting fear as Moscow escalates its gray-zone attacks on NATO—sabotage, arson, assassination attempts, cyberattacks, and disinformation campaigns. Brussels and other capitals have been talking about a historic defense buildup since the Ukraine war began in 2022. But so far, there has been more talk—plans, promises, blueprints, and legislative proposals—than action. And time could be running out, especially if Ukraine were forced to stop fighting, leaving Europe without a shield and freeing Russia to take the next step against the West.  

What the Witkoff plan revealed, and the prospect should be terrifying for Europe: Washington may be willing to let this happen. Far from standing with its NATO allies against a clear and present danger, the plan would have rewarded Russia, encouraged further aggression, and vindicated Putin’s belief that strong countries can do as they please in their spheres of influence—and Washington would have done nothing to stop him as long as Trump found a way to benefit financially.  

The White House may or may not be backing down now, but the lesson should not be lost on Europe. It cannot and must not continue to rely on Washington to keep the peace. What’s needed isn’t just managing Trump’s excesses and cleaning up his mistakes, but an all-out push toward strategic autonomy, starting with an urgent defense buildup modeled on the transformation that made America the “arsenal of democracy” in the 1940s. 

Will either America or its allies learn these lessons? Probably not—or not right away. Instead, Europe and the U.S. are likely to spend the coming weeks struggling to amend a plan that will in the end prove too reasonable for Putin. It won’t be the first time this has happened. We’ve seen repeatedly since Trump returned to the White House. Instead of moving decisively to counter the threat from the East—leveraging frozen Russian assets, restricting Moscow’s oil revenue, cracking down on its trading partners, and arming Ukraine to win the war—the world again gets distracted by a “plan” that’s probably going nowhere. 

The post Three Lessons From Trump’s Latest Plan for Ukraine  appeared first on Washington Monthly.

The war in Ukraine has transformed Western European thinking about defending itself against its giant neighbor, Russia. The latest push, proposed last week by the European Union, is a blueprint for a better coordinated military buildup—procuring and manufacturing weapons together rather than separately, country by country. It’s an ambitious plan, in line with other pending continent-wide reforms—deregulation and a single capital market—and like them, it promises increased efficiency and scale in pursuit of shared European goals. What’s unclear is whether the 27 EU members and their allies, including Britain, can put aside national interests for the common good. The stakes could hardly be higher, but the evidence is mixed. 

Much has changed in Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, with countries across the continent talking a much different game than four years ago. After decades of hoping for good relations with Moscow, most leaders now see their eastern neighbor as an aggressive, revanchist power, preparing potentially for a hot war and already menacing nearby nations with an array of gray-zone weapons—from disinformation and cyberattacks to sabotage of critical infrastructure. Uncertain if an increasingly fickle and isolationist U.S. will stand by them, many Europeans recognize they must prepare to face the enemy alone, and defense is now Topic A in political circles. 

Many countries are actively preparing. National defense budgets have increased dramatically—from €218 billion in 2021 to a projected €392 billion in 2025. A generation of innovative startups is competing with seasoned contractors to develop cutting-edge weapons. The most concerned capitals are discussing mandatory conscription, and some have mounted national programs to teach civilian defense. 

Still, for all this progress, many across the continent, concerned about the pace of change, wonder if Europe will succeed in translating its bold talk into action. 

 The problem starts with defense spending. In 2014, shortly after Russia annexed Crimea, all NATO members agreed to increase defense outlays to 2 percent of national GDP. But by 2021, only six had. Last year, driven by President Donald Trump’s bullying and fear of Russian President Vladimir Putin, NATO set a new goal of 5 percent. But only part of that total—3.5 percent of economic output—must be spent on weapons and ammunition, with countries allowed to use the remaining 1.5 percent for “critical infrastructure,” and many proposed infrastructure projects, like a much-ridiculed bridge between Sicily and the Italian mainland, hardly meet the laugh test.  

 Along with these national commitments, in 2024, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen set a €500 billion goal for EU defense spending over the next decade. Officials across the union lauded the idea, and some spoke ambitiously about including €500 billion in the next EU seven-year budget. That now seems unlikely, but Brussels has moved to make good on von der Leyen’s goal with the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) initiative, borrowing €150 billion to finance low-interest loans for member states working to boost defense production. The bloc has also enacted a four-year rule change, the “national escape clause,” that could make it easier for capitals to spend an estimated €650 billion from their own budgets on defense. 

If this money comes through, it will be a huge increase—according to one estimate, leaked to the press this weekend, it could amount to as much as €2.4 trillion over four years. European funding is unlikely to match the U.S. defense budget, which totaled $997 billion in 2024, but it could rival Russian and even Chinese spending, estimated at $149 billion and $314 billion, respectively, in 2024.  

The problem: It will be up to national leaders to take advantage of the new EU incentives, and many may hesitate for financial and political reasons—neither the far left nor the far right is on board in many countries. Meanwhile, the EU has struggled to pass the much smaller €1.5 billion European Defense Industrial Strategy, proposed in 2024 but still not formally approved.  

So too with European aid for Ukraine. Already in the first year of the war, many in Europe talked a better game than the U.S.—shrewder about Putin and with a better understanding of Ukraine’s needs. These European voices have grown stronger with time, making up for Americans, who have grown hesitant, if not reluctant, to help. According to one estimate, in 2022, Europe provided €16.5 billion in military aid—compared to Washington’s €24 billion. But by 2024, the ratio had reversed: Ukraine received €42 billion from Europe and €16.5 billion from the U.S. Washington has allocated no new aid since Trump took office in January, while Europe provided €24 billion in just six months in 2025.  

This aid has been crucial for Ukraine, sustaining it—indeed, guaranteeing its survival—even as Russia’s military grew stronger and Moscow learned from its mistakes in the early months of the war. But European aid dropped dramatically this summer to less than half the monthly average earlier in the year, and the continent still devotes only a tiny fraction of its annual GDP to Ukraine. From 2022 to 2024, the biggest donors, including Germany and Britain, allocated just 0.2 percent of economic output, while smaller countries in southern Europe spent less than 0.1 percent. 

It isn’t hard to understand why. National budgets are tight. Two of the bloc’s biggest member states—France and the United Kingdom—face crippling debt crises. Until recently, Germany was constrained by a constitutional “debt brake,” barring Berlin from accruing a deficit of more than 0.35 percent of GDP.  

Still, the math is straightforward: when it comes to military spending, Europeans’ actions do not match their rhetoric—on their own defense or aid to Ukraine. 

Nor is money the only issue. Even more challenging than budget constraints, the EU is hamstrung by a deep-rooted inclination to put national interest first—at the expense of collective interest. Former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta illustrated the problem metaphorically in a much-cited 2024 EU report on European competitiveness. Letta had hoped to gather input for his paper in cities across the continent, traveling from capital to capital by high-speed rail. But he could not make the trip by rail because national railway systems run most European high-speed trains, and few connect to high-speed trains in neighboring countries. 

Defense investment is similarly fragmented. Europe makes five different types of main battle tanks. At least seven countries produce artillery. French defense giant Thales competes head-to-head with Sweden’s Saab and Germany’s Hensoldt to sell defense electronics and sensors to developing countries worldwide, to cite just one example.  

It’s hard to find a policymaker or defense expert who doesn’t extol the virtues of cooperation. Coordinated planning, collective procurement, and joint production would allow the continent to produce much more for less and accelerate its urgently needed military buildup. But age-old habits and ingrained interests argue against the collaborative action that’s needed. 

No project illustrates the challenge more clearly than the sputtering partnership between France’s Dassault and Germany’s Airbus to build a sixth-generation fighter jet, the Future Combat Air System (FCAS). Launched in 2017 by Berlin and Paris and later joined by Madrid, the €100 billion initiative is meant to be an equal collaboration—one country, one vote—delivering a state-of-the-art, AI-enhanced fighting platform by 2040.  

But long-running tensions between the industry partners erupted publicly this fall when Dassault announced it wanted a freer hand to complete the project’s next phase. If Germany couldn’t agree, the company would go it alone. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron are eager to resolve the conflict, but the manufacturers seem to be at an impasse, and by all accounts, the high-profile collaboration is on the verge of collapse. 

The new EU proposal, the Defense Readiness Roundup 2030, will be debated this week at a meeting of the bloc’s 27 national leaders. It attempts to address this entrenched fragmentation. The document identifies nine “priority areas”— including ground combat, artillery, drones, and air and missile defense—and urges member states to tackle them collaboratively. Countries are encouraged to collaborate on producing and purchasing weapons. Recommended approaches include joint ventures and “capability coalitions.”  

“There is a clear need,” the report states, “to invest more, invest together and invest European” rather than buying off-the-shelf products from American or Asian defense contractors. Building on the €150 billion set aside for low-interest SAFE loans—funding available only for joint production by two or more EU or allied countries—the report suggests there may be more money to come for collaborative projects.  

The roadmap is not naïve. Its authors know better than to ask member states to cede national control, particularly of defense. But the paper sets an ambitious goal: that by 2020, 40 percent of European defense production—more than double the current share—will be collaborative. 

The obstacles to collective action start with history—80 years of European dependence on American leadership for all things defense-related. Since the launch of the transatlantic alliance in 1949, Washington has been responsible for NATO command and control, and members have rarely cooperated except at the direction of the U.S. The EU’s collective decision-making process poses a second major hurdle. Virtually all big bloc decisions require unanimity, now routinely stymied by pro-Russian Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and other populist, far-right leaders. Also problematic: the continent’s lack of a single credit market, slowing the flow of capital and inhibiting cross-border investments. 

What’s needed is the political will to cut through these thickets, advancing difficult political and financial reforms and subordinating national interest to the common good. Can Europe pull this off? Will it do so quickly enough? Western intelligence services predict the Kremlin could be ready for full-scale war in Western Europe by 2030 and possibly as soon as 2027. Meanwhile, the gray-zone war that escalated dramatically last month with aerial incursions in a half dozen countries is all but certain to get hotter. A robust defense buildup is the only way to fend off a possible Russian attack, preserving European peace and prosperity. 

There is reason for hope. In contrast to the U.S., European leaders and much of the public are aware of the threat, and many countries have made impressive strides. But nothing has come easily. There are objections and obstacles at every step, and the pace of change has been painfully slow.  

This week will bring two critical tests as Europeans debate the commission’s defense spending proposal and respond to Trump’s latest pendulum swing on Ukraine—another strong tilt toward Moscow. EU founding father Jean Monet’s often quoted remark has rarely seemed more apt: “Europe will be forged in crises and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises.” Few crises in the continent’s post-World War II history have seemed as urgent as the potentially existential challenge it faces today, and the outcome is far from clear.  

The post Can Europe Turn Tough Talk on Russia into Action?  appeared first on Washington Monthly.

It was the kind of display only NATO can mount. Several hundred Italian troops from the alliance’s Baltic air policing mission stood in formation at Estonia’s Ämari Air Base, more than 1,500 miles from home. Some of the world’s most powerful weaponry loomed behind them on the windswept tarmac: an F-35 fighter jet, a SAMP/T air defense missile launcher, a Typhoon Eurofighter, and a CAEW radar surveillance plane.

Just days after three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets violated Estonian airspace, loitering for 12 minutes before being escorted out by NATO aircraft, Italian defense minister Guido Crosetto had flown in to thank the Italian pilots who intercepted the planes. A big bear of a man with a shaved head, he and Estonian defense minister Hanno Pevkur stood together on the runway to announce that Italy would extend its rotational presence in Estonia, leaving its jets and air defense system at Ämari through spring 2026.

“If [the Russians] are looking for a response,” Crosetto declared, “this is it—our strengthened presence here.”

His determination seemed all the more striking coming from one of the founders, along with Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, of the right-wing populist party, Brothers of Italy, that many once worried would be skeptical of NATO and hesitant to confront Russia. “We’re here,” Crosetto proclaimed, “to show with our physical presence that we are an alliance, and we work as an alliance.”

The MiG incursion in Estonia was just one in a spate of Russian violations of European airspace this fall. In early September, 21 Russian drones crashed or were shot down over Poland. Four days later, a Russian drone was intercepted over Romania. The morning before the ministers met at Ämari, more drones were sighted in nearby Baltic Sea countries, buzzing over airports in Oslo and Copenhagen. Other swarms have appeared in the weeks since over France, Germany, and Lithuania.

Americans have been preoccupied with the shutdown, but many in Europe wonder if the war in Ukraine might finally be spilling out across the continent. At a time of growing transatlantic tensions and questions about NATO, would Americans take note of the danger? And how would the West respond?

Few nations have a bigger stake in NATO than tiny Estonia, with a population of 1.4 million, and its two Baltic sister states, Latvia and Lithuania, all three long overshadowed by their giant neighbor, Russia. Tsarist Russia fought Europe on Estonian territory in the 16th century. Russia conquered and ruled much of the Baltic region through the 18th and 19th centuries. A brief period of Estonian independence between the two world wars gave way to a brutal Soviet occupation in 1940.

“Every Estonian family lost someone under communist rule,” one young woman told me. An officer shot by a Russian firing squad, an intellectual deported to the gulag, a farmer run off his land and hunted down in the forest: altogether, roughly one-fifth of the population was murdered or dispersed.

The Russian incursion last month came as no surprise. Estonia has been contending with Russian gray-zone warfare—cyberattacks, sabotage, drone overflights, and undersea cable cutting—since what many call its “re-independence” in 1991. Today, citizens and politicians put a premium on resilience, and no political faction questions the national focus on preparedness: robust defense spending, mandatory conscription, a large volunteer defense force, and extensive civilian resilience training. Tallinn plans to spend 5.4 percent of GDP on core military needs in 2026—well above the 3.5 percent now pledged by most NATO members.

But even against this backdrop, Estonians were stunned in 2021 to hear Vladimir Putin declare his imperialist aims in Europe: not just to reclaim Ukraine but also to push NATO back to its pre-1997 borders. For Estonia, which joined the alliance in 2004, this would mean the removal of all NATO troops and weaponry, leaving it to its own modest resources in the face of an aggressive, revanchist Russia.

No one I spoke with in Estonia thought the MiG incursion marked the beginning of a hot war in Europe. “There is no acute military danger on our borders,” Jonatan Vseviov, secretary general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told me. “The Russians are stuck in Ukraine, and they do not want a military confrontation with NATO—we know that with certainty.”

The all but universal consensus in Tallinn is that the Kremlin’s goal was to cow Ukraine’s European supporters—Denmark, Norway, Estonia, and Poland are among Kyiv’s staunchest NATO allies—sowing fear among the public and concentrating minds on homeland defense rather than aiding Ukraine.

Still, no one doubts the longer-term danger for Europe. “Putin wants to make life as we know it impossible,” explained Vseviov, a dark-haired man with a square brow who used to be Estonia’s ambassador to the U.S., “by dividing NATO and creating a buffer zone on his border—weak, divided, corrupt countries. This has been one of his top goals for three decades: to ensure that democracy, free markets, and the rule of law can’t seep across the border to Russia.”

A block away, at the defense ministry, officials monitoring the Russian threat have been stunned to see Moscow mounting a historic military buildup even as it wages the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II.

“The Kremlin is losing 30,000 soldiers a month in Ukraine but still managing to replace them by recruiting 30,000 men each month,” says Kristjan Mäe, the slender, sandy-haired head of the ministry’s policy planning department. Russian defense spending more than quadrupled from 2021 to 2025, and most of its 1.3 million active-duty personnel are now battle-hardened. “To run the war and the buildup in parallel is very significant,” Mäe notes. “Even as it wages war in Ukraine, Russia is preparing for a larger war in Europe.” Still, he agrees, there will be no military attack as long as Russia is tied up in Ukraine.

Everyone I meet with in Tallinn makes the same point about the war in Ukraine: Ukrainians are fighting for them, defending Europe, and weakening the Russian military. Several quoted former Estonian spy chief Mikk Marran: “Every Russian tank destroyed in Ukraine is one less Russian tank that could someday invade Estonia.”

Estonia has led every European effort to support Ukraine and often acts as a gadfly, urging others in the European Union and NATO to provide more aid. But everyone I met in Tallinn had a slightly different idea of what it might mean for Estonia once the fighting in Ukraine ends. 

Mäe’s worst nightmare is a Russian victory. “That would open the door to something much worse,” he explains. Moscow would likely move tens of thousands of troops from the front in Ukraine to the new military bases it’s building on the border of Estonia. It might take a few years to regroup and replenish, but Russia is already stockpiling weapons. Worst of all, Mäe says, “victory would prove to the Kremlin that despite the cost of war, the reward is even greater.”

Yet even a Russian loss would be unlikely to bring relief in Tallinn. “There will be no end to history,” the foreign ministry’s Vseviov explains. “We will still need to confront Russia. It just may be a little easier if Moscow loses. That would put us in a better position to continue the struggle.”

The bigger question hovering over these scenarios is what NATO will do if Russia attacks. One expert I met told me an old Estonian joke: “Of course, NATO will come to our defense. They’ll send one instructor.” But not even she seemed particularly worried. Across the board, somewhat surprisingly to me, everyone I spoke to was confident that the alliance would come through. In the event of a gray-zone attack, there might be some questions: would NATO agree that a red line had been crossed, and would relief arrive quickly enough? But no one seemed to doubt that the alliance would eventually deliver.

“It been the guiding principle of our foreign policy since independence,” Mäe explained, “to make sure we never again find ourselves alone.” Officials and independent experts alike pointed to a long list of what they see as reassuring evidence: the NATO contingent of British and French troops stationed at the Tapa Army Base, the air policing mission that operates 24/7 out of Ämari, the NATO forward presence in Latvia and Lithuania, the fact that Finland and Sweden have joined the alliance, aligning all Baltic Sea capitals in a like-minded state of readiness. “And all this is in peacetime,” Vseviov underlines. “The only challenge is making this certainty credible to Moscow—and we work very hard on that.”

Of course, he and others recognize that things are changing within the alliance. “For 80 years,” Vseviov reflects, “America proposed, and Europe reacted. Sometimes we agreed, sometimes we disagreed, or hesitated. But it was all American ideas, implemented by American leadership with American capabilities.” Now things are changing, and Europe finds itself in a new position. Many Estonians are frustrated by the pace of change across the continent—the military buildup and the understanding of the threat from Russia. But they can do only so much to spur other Europeans to fill the gaps left by ebbing American interest.

I press the question at every meeting. “Are you confident that America will come through? And if the U.S. hesitates, can the rest of NATO do what would be needed here?” One Estonian official who declined to be quoted speculated about the theoretical consequences of a U.S. withdrawal from the alliance. “If NATO had to defend Estonia tonight, it would be ready and up to the task. Without the U.S. and Canada, it will be five to 10 years before Europe is ready.”

But no one discussing the situation admitted to any doubt. “Of course,” Mäe concedes, “any crack in NATO unity sends a dangerous signal to our adversaries.” Still, he insists that Washington has repeatedly reassured Tallinn, and he ticks off dates and venues when Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth committed the U.S. to stand by the Baltic states. “We Europeans should focus on what we need to be doing,” Mäe maintains, “how we can strengthen the alliance.”

Ultimately, it’s hard for a visiting American not to marvel at the Estonian determination to look on the bright side. “You don’t understand,” Vseviov tries to clarify for me. “Russia has always been a problem for us or occupied us. But being afraid is no cure. Think about the Japanese living in an earthquake zone. You can’t live in fear. You prepare, as we have prepared by tying ourselves to the European Union and NATO.”

The post Estonia in the Crosshairs appeared first on Washington Monthly.

Looking back, it was a prescient warning. Just the day before the Kremlin sent 19 unmanned aerial vehicles deep into Polish territory, prompting NATO to scramble its most advanced fighter jets and anti-missile air defenses, I met with the commander of a Ukrainian air defense unit protecting the city of Sloviansk from Russian drones. We sat outdoors in a quiet courtyard near the city center, just 15 miles from the front line. The officer, who goes by the name Fin—he worked in the financial sector, running a grain export company, before volunteering for combat duty in 2022—explained how his team of advanced IT technicians and other specialists uses signals intelligence (SIGINT) to intercept incoming Russian drones.

A tall, well-built man with a graying beard, Fin took out his phone to show me a video of a typical intercept. The unit had hacked into the frequencies the targeted Russian drone was using to send video images back to its pilot behind the front line, letting us see the battlefield through enemy eyes. Ukrainian forests and fields floated by, bracketed by the drone’s spinning rotors on the edges of the frame. Then it all went gray. The SIGINT unit, code-named Specter, had used the device’s own navigational signals to bring it down, crashing to earth far short of its target.

“We do this for a fraction of what it would cost Europe and the U.S.,” Fin explained. “No jets, no million-dollar weaponry. And we intercept a large number of drones.” Just the night before, he told me, a routine evening in Sloviansk, the unit brought down 198 enemy UAVs. “Europe and the U.S. should start learning from us before it’s too late,” he warned. “They’ll either learn from our experience, or they’ll learn on their own—the hard way.”

Fin’s unit, a battalion of the armed forces’ 54th Separate Mechanized Brigade, isn’t unique. Electronic warfare is ubiquitous in Ukraine. Virtually every unit, Ukrainian and Russian, uses radio frequencies to jam and spoof the other side’s incoming missiles and drones, and a growing number can also hack into the enemy’s video streams to see what it sees or bring its devices down. But Fin says Specter is one of the most experienced units in the area.

“We jam everything that’s incoming,” he explained, “whatever its task. Without us, no other operations—offense, defense, logistics, infantry, evacuations—are possible.” His broader goals: to protect Ukrainian troops and civilians in Sloviansk, as well as the roads leading into and out of the city. “Other units are the sword,” Fin says. “We are the shield.”

So far this year, Specter has destroyed or disabled 8,000 incoming drones. Although recent months have seen a marked uptick in Russian aerial activity in Sloviansk—more drones and more huge, powerful glide bombs, including on the road that connects the strategically important logistics hub to western Ukraine—the city is still relatively livable.

Specter’s control centers dot the region—in civilian homes near the city center, farmhouses in outlying villages, and even trenches less than two miles from enemy positions. I visit one on the city’s outskirts—a small house, its living room now lined with giant screens. A smaller room nearby—for what the unit calls “research”—features a collection of mangled enemy drones that the team has managed to retrieve and demine. “We take them apart,” explains one man, who, like the others, declines to give his name, “to decipher how they’re built and what frequencies they use.”

Back in the main room, three techs scan the big screens, toggling between images. “We do many things,” says one soldier, “including reconnaissance and research. But our main task is to prevent anything from reaching our guys.” Once operators have intercepted the signals of a Russian drone and can see through its eyes, they work to determine its location. Expensive software would do this electronically, but the unit has a simpler way—comparing the intercepted Russian video to their own satellite image of the area. “It’s coming in over a ravine, see?” one man points out. “That’s this ravine here—the same one in our image.”

This time, the intercept is slower. Instead of crashing immediately, the UAV careens wildly right and left as if it were drunk—we know because we’re watching through its eyes—before the screen goes gray. A few minutes later, another feed shows a grainy image of a Russian pilot’s hands and face—he has turned on his video feed prematurely, before launching his drone. According to one operator, Specter can jam nearly three-quarters of enemy incoming headed for Sloviansk.

Drone warfare is constantly evolving and is different today than just a few months ago. The unit works hard to stay ahead. Among this year’s most significant developments has been the proliferation of UAVs controlled by fiber optic cable rather than radio waves. Ukrainian fighters can’t jam them as they jam ordinary first-person view drones, but they have other tools. “You can shoot the cable with a rifle,” one soldier tells me, “or use a drone of your own fitted with a net to capture the device.” Fin’s goal, which he says is not far away, is to jam the signal coming through the cable, downing the device electronically.

He is also looking for ways to counter AI-enabled drones. While Fin experiments with more sophisticated methods, his preferred tactic today is to intercept and down the device before its AI-powered target recognition kicks in, locking on its quarry. Alternatively, he tries to hack into the algorithm propelling the UAV and predict its course.

Other developments in the pipeline include hacking into the enemy’s most sophisticated UAVs—Orlan reconnaissance drones and Lancet loitering munitions, known for their high-precision pinpoint strikes. Specter can already suppress both devices’ navigational systems, but can’t yet override them. Still another ambitious goal: jamming the satellite signals that direct Russia’s much-feared glide bombs, each capable of destroying the better part of a city block.

The next frontier, the most menacing development Fin sees on the horizon: Russia has started to mix and match drone components, combining the most powerful elements from various systems to create more dangerous, hybrid devices. Ordinary first-person view UAVs, for example, now cheap and plentiful, buzzing everywhere on both sides of the front line, can be equipped with navigational components from more sophisticated Lancet drones, rendering them far more accurate and lethal.

The Ukrainian commander is eager to see more cooperation with the West—for both sides’ sakes. As he sees it, Europe and the U.S. have much to learn from Ukraine’s battlefield experience, particularly with low-cost jamming and interception, while Ukraine could benefit from access to sophisticated Western reconnaissance tools, particularly SIGINT software. Specter is already cooperating with Finland and several Baltic states, and Fin expects that collaboration to expand in the coming months. But he complains that the U.S. lags far behind. “The Americans seem much less interested in low-cost jamming,” he laments, and although the Defense Department is sharing a free demo version of one advanced software tool, it has declined to provide the full package.

When I ask who is ahead in the drone war, Fin answers philosophically. “It’s a pendulum,” he says, “swinging back and forth every day.” Today, the enemy is better at long-range electronic warfare, but Ukrainian jamming and interception are more agile. “Sometimes we’re ahead and they learn from us,” Fin says, “sometimes vice versa. The one thing that’s certain—the U.S. and Europe are way behind.”

The post Downing Russian Drones: “The U.S. and Europe Should Learn From Us” appeared first on Washington Monthly.

It was already clear at 10:00 p.m. that it would be a tough night in Kyiv. The air alert sounded at 9:24 p.m., blaring outside and shrieking out of the state-supported app on my phone. Like many in Ukraine, I checked a couple of privately run Telegram chats to see what was incoming—the chats use open-source intelligence to give real-time updates, sometimes with a text every few seconds, showing exactly what is in the air and where, pinpointed to the neighborhood. The picture didn’t look good: already two dozen little drone icons on my go-to channel’s schematic map. But none were yet in Kyiv, so I breathed easy for now and went back to my otherwise quiet Wednesday night. 

That day, the news in the Western media was still all about Donald Trump’s efforts to broker a ceasefire a week earlier. Several media outlets were still analyzing what exactly had happened when seven European leaders, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, traveled to the White House on August 18 to try to undo the damage Trump caused at his chummy meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska the week before. Another story revealed European leaders were working to develop security guarantees—perhaps European soldiers at Ukrainian airports and train stations—to be implemented once a peace agreement is signed. Another shocking report detailed ExxonMobil’s secret talks with a state-run Russian energy giant about resuming business as usual when the ink on a deal is dry.  

What world are they living in? I wondered as I toggled between news stories and the Telegram chat describing the Russian drones and missiles hurtling toward me. Do they really think a ceasefire is in the offing? Have they not seen and heard Putin and his team, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, just a few days earlier on NBC’s Meet the Press, assuring the world that Russia wants peace even as the Kremlin doubles down on its unmeetable demands to control Ukraine and upend European security?  

Don’t these journalists and diplomats see that we’re just in a new phase of the war, likely to continue for months if not years, where Moscow says the right things about peace but keeps fighting, killing thousands of its own troops as they inch forward on the front and terrorizing Ukrainian civilians? 

Things looked a little worse just after midnight when I started thinking about bed. Everyone in Kyiv has their own way of dealing with the risk. I choose among three nighttime options, depending on how bad I think things look: sleeping in my bed, sleeping on a foam mattress in a windowless room—less danger from shock waves from a nearby explosion that could shatter the windows and send debris shooting into the room—or taking the elevator down 11 floors to the communal shelter in the basement. Tonight felt like a foam mattress night, so I bedded down in the tiny vestibule leading into my apartment. Still, just to be safe, I laid out the essentials I would take with me if I headed to the basement—my passport, my glasses, an envelope of cash—all the easier to throw into a backpack if things got worse. 

At about 2:00 a.m., a loud explosion outside jolted me awake. At first, I ignored it, trying to doze off, but two more came. A glance at Telegram told me that several Russian planes capable of carrying cruise and ballistic missiles—far more destructive than drones, deadly as the drones are—were flying toward Kyiv. I decided it was time to take the next step. 

As I locked my apartment, I glanced down the corridor toward a neighbors’ flat. They’re a multigenerational family: 30-something parents, their elderly parents, and three small children, including a baby born just a few months ago. They often seek safety at about the same time I do, but they don’t go to the shelter—perhaps it’s difficult with the little kids. Tonight, as usual, they had brought blankets and strollers out into the corridor and were preparing a makeshift campsite on the hard linoleum floor.  

I’m in a hurry—the missiles are coming—but I stop momentarily to take in the sight. What made that mother decide to bring a baby into the world in the middle of a war that threatened to wipe not just her family but her nation off the map? And what did little Adriian, 5, and Alisa, 3, make of what was happening on nights like these? Then, as I turn away, Donald Trump floats back to mind. Did he really think this bombardment was somehow equivalent, as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt would maintain the next day, to Ukrainian strikes hitting Russian airfields, oil depots, and military logistics hubs? 

More than three years into Russia’s war on Ukraine, everyone in my tony high-rise apartment building has a drill by now, and about a dozen people sleep in my section of the basement shelter. They come in pajamas and sweatsuits and, in winter, coats. Many bring their cats in travel cases. Some try to sleep on beds constructed in the early days of the war, others on air mattresses or beanbag chairs. Still others tough it out upright on wooden benches or metal chairs, passing the long hours scrolling through their phones. It’s dark, but not pitch dark in the unfinished space, and as a rule, no one speaks. 

At about 3 a.m., I woke up to an explosion louder than I’ve ever heard. One woman lying nearby screams as she wakes, as if from a nightmare, and the big building shakes above us. (Later, I would wonder if I really felt this—though the neighbor association chat confirmed it in the morning.) Still, no one speaks. Like many, I look at my phone for information but can’t find anything—the chats usually don’t report hits until the next day. But nothing else occurs—no visible fire, sirens, or signs of the building collapsing—and the people around me gradually settle down. I toss and turn for an hour, then finally fall asleep. 

When I go upstairs early in the morning, my apartment looks fine—no shattered windows, no rescue vehicles outside, and only the usual morning smoke over the Kyiv hills in the distance. I nap for about an hour before texting a few friends. “Are you okay?” we ask each other. “Is the family safe?” Most seem shaken but unharmed, and I go about my day. 

It’s only in the early afternoon that my landlord texts me. “I read about what happened on the building chat,” he writes. “Are you okay?” What I found when I checked the chat was alarming. One video featured a tracking shot from a car moving slowly along a main road just down the hill from our building: a huge black crater had replaced the gas station that once sat against the hill. CCTV footage from the terrace in front of our building, just 200 yards above, was gray and grainy during the first motionless 20 seconds. Then the sky beyond the terrace lights up—an orange flash—and the screen fills with what looks like confetti or maybe hail. Several still photos capture the debris that hit the building facade and pitted the terrace. Other images reveal broken windows and twisted window frames, though mercifully no worse damage.  

The horrific news reports trickle in later in the day: at least 63 people are injured in Kyiv overnight, and 23 are dead, including four children. Still, life goes on in my building. When I go out to the market in the late afternoon, children are playing on the damaged terrace and squealing with delight. Even as I start to wonder if I should move to a different neighborhood, someone in the house chat reassures me: “I believe we live in a blessed building,” a tenant named Artem writes. “Last year, a ballistic missile buried itself in the yard next door without exploding, and last night was nothing but a scratch.”  

Later in the evening, I meet friends downtown, and we sit enjoying the last days of summer at an open-air café. No one knows how or when the war will end, and we all acknowledge that there will be many more nights like Wednesday. Meanwhile, even as Kyiv mourns its dead, Trump has resumed blaming both sides. Press secretary Leavitt commented that the president was “not surprised” by the attack. “These are two countries that have been at war for a very long time.” 

The post A Deadly Night in Kyiv Makes a Mockery of the Peace Process appeared first on Washington Monthly.

The seven European leaders who accompanied President Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House on Monday made little secret of why they had suddenly interrupted their summer vacations to make the trip. They believed they might need to shield the Ukrainian leader from the disparagement and bullying he had to endure on his last Oval Office visit in February.  

In the end, that wasn’t necessary. Host Donald Trump was jovial and eager to get along with his guests. He complimented Zelensky on his suit-like attire and flattered the seven Europeans— NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and Finnish President Alexander Stubb—each with a personalized compliment. They flattered back with even more lavish and ingratiating thanks and praise, and everyone seemed to go home happy. 

The questions left hanging amid all the smiles and good cheer: what exactly did they discuss—and what issues, if any, were settled? 

In fact, the three big items that should have been on the agenda—the critical issues that should be at the heart of any agreement ending the war in Ukraine—were conspicuously absent.  

There was little discussion at the summit of the question Vladimir Putin has put front and center by proposing what the White House calls a “land swap.” Russia is demanding that Ukraine cede some 6,600 square kilometers of territory—a strategically pivotal area Moscow has failed to conquer in over a decade of off-and-on fighting—in exchange for two other, relatively insignificant chunks that together add up to only 440 square kilometers. Putin says he won’t stop fighting until that deal is done; Zelensky refuses to cede the territory. But somehow, everyone managed to avoid the issue over nearly six hours of meetings at the White House. Zelensky ignored a media question on the subject, and no conclusions were reached behind closed doors. 

Also missing from the agenda was any discussion of what Putin calls the “root causes” of the war—Ukraine’s political independence from Russia, its maturing ties to the West, and NATO’s expansion into the former Russian and Soviet sphere of influence. As Putin has repeatedly stressed, including last week in Alaska, these are the irritants that led Russia to invade in 2022, and he will not accept any peace that does not resolve them, recognizing what he calls Russia’s “legitimate concerns” in Ukraine and “reinstating a just balance of security in Europe.” It’s hard to imagine a more momentous set of issues for the leaders gathered in the White House to discuss—but apparently none of them were addressed in either the public or private segments of the summit. 

Nor—the third missing topic—was the cause that ought to be uniting Western leaders as they shape proposals for a just and lasting peace in Ukraine: how to address the disturbing geopolitical assumptions underpinning Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. How should democratic leaders counter his implicit claims that might makes right and big countries can do as they wish with smaller neighbors? The problem is that Europe and the United States may no longer agree on this essential issue. Remember Trump’s claims on Greenland and Panama. So the topic may never come up among Western leaders—essential as it is to sustaining peace in Europe and elsewhere. 

The three topics that made it onto the White House agenda were as revealing as those left out of the discussion. 

Number one, not surprisingly, was Trump’s obsession: a continuation of the unscripted mano-a-mano diplomacy he thinks he’s so good at and aims to turn into an international norm. The president repeatedly returned on Monday to the idea that Zelensky and Putin should meet face-to-face, followed by what Trump likes to call a “trilat,” or three-way meeting.  

Never mind that Putin has spent over four years belittling Zelensky as a Western puppet with no legitimate governing mandate—anything but a peer of the kind one would want to meet on a world stage. More threatening in Putin’s eyes, a bilateral or trilateral meeting would call his bluff and likely expose his reluctance to stop fighting in Ukraine. No wonder Moscow has responded to Trump’s suggestion with the usual Kremlin two-step: agreeing in principle to a meeting but waffling on what that means and stalling for time. 

The second item on Monday’s agenda, Western security guarantees for Ukraine, was more substantial and meaningful, though perhaps still premature. Putin has openly expressed his desire to restore Moscow’s control over all of Ukraine and several other European countries, including Poland and the Baltic States, which were once dominated by Russia and later the Soviet Union. As French President Macron stated on Tuesday, the Russian leader “is a predator, an ogre at our gate” who “for his own survival, needs to keep eating.”  

No peace deal can hope to stick without robust security guarantees to prevent renewed fighting in Ukraine or on the borders of NATO, and Ukraine will need Western support to stop another Russian attack: a continuing flow of Western weapons, ammunition, intelligence, air defenses, and perhaps boots on the ground.  

Discussing security guarantees now, before a deal is made, might seem like putting the cart before the horse—similar to insisting on a prenup before the romance has fully blossomed. But maybe that’s actually the best time to bring up a prenup—and some progress was achieved in Washington, with the 47th president agreeing to join a European-led deterrent.  

Still, the issue remains unsettled. Complex and contentious negotiations lie ahead. It’s far from clear that any European countries will agree to send troops. Putin has already nixed a peacekeeping force composed of NATO fighters. Ukraine has a long, bitter history of relying on Eastern and Western security guarantees that never materialized, and anyone who trusts Trump—or American voters, for that matter—to stay the course in world affairs is only asking for trouble. Remember the League of Nations, proposed by Woodrow Wilson and agreed to in the treaty that ended World War I, but then rejected by Congress when it refused to ratify that treaty? 

The third item on Monday’s agenda came and went quickly in the public conversation between Trump and Zelensky, but it explains a lot. The Ukrainian leader offered to buy $100 billion of U.S. weaponry and sign a $50 billion deal for U.S.-Ukrainian co-production of Ukrainian drones. Now that’s Trump’s kind of diplomacy—and the truth is it’s the most likely of anything on the summit agenda to come to fruition.  

What’s next? What are the prospects for a meaningful truce? Anything could happen—there’s a lot in the air. But the smart money in both Europe and Ukraine is cautious.  

This may be the beginning of the end—a true peace deal. Or it may just be a new and prolonged phase of the war, as Putin pretends to consider peace but continues fighting, and Trump continues to dither, changing his mind every few weeks, about how to respond. The president still doesn’t seem to understand the man he’s up against in the Kremlin, and until he does, there’s no hope for a just or lasting peace in Ukraine.  

The post Trump, Zelensky, and European Leaders Got Along—Mostly by Sidestepping the Big Issues  appeared first on Washington Monthly.

Last week was a relatively good week in Kyiv. Despite all the hype and hoopla swirling in the Western media, few Ukrainians expected much from the summit in Anchorage. But in the run-up to the meeting, Vladimir Putin was eager to get on Donald Trump’s good side, and he showed some restraint in launching missile and drone attacks. There were no significant air alerts in the capital city for a week. Residents got their first full night’s sleep in many months, and it showed in the mood—everyone seemed just a little kinder and more cheerful. “Now, if only we can survive the peace,” one active-duty soldier joked, looking ahead to the Alaska talks. 

When the news came late Friday, no one in Kyiv was surprised that the meeting had fizzled. If anything, there was a sigh of relief—no deal had been made above Ukrainian heads.  

Now the grim reality is setting in—in Kyiv and across the West. If all the silly talk and false hope leading up the summit served any purpose, it was to remind the world that war is still raging in Europe. It also helped concentrate minds—among Western publics and politicians—on the end game in Ukraine.  

That’s why, when Trump summoned Ukrainian president Volodymir Zelensky to meet in D.C. on Monday, a team of European leaders including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the secretary-general of the NATO military alliance Mark Rutte, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz insisted on coming too, in a show of support for a tougher line in Ukraine and to shape the outcome of any future deal.  

If the summit was a one-on-one contest, Putin won hands-down. Not only did the meeting legitimize his leadership and put an end to the isolation of Russia upheld by the West since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It also upended the terms of the East-West conversation about the war, with Trump dropping his insistence on a ceasefire and turning instead to Putin’s demand that the West address what the Russian dictator claims are the “root causes” of the conflict—Ukraine’s political independence from Russia, its maturing ties to the West, and the expansion of NATO into the former Russian and Soviet sphere of influence. 

“It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a peace agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere ceasefire agreement, which often times do not hold up,” Trump posted on Truth Social after the talks. Translation: the president is willing to consider Putin’s claim that Russia should be able to curb Ukraine’s national sovereignty—Kyiv’s right to determine its own form of government, shape its own cultural identity, and choose its own allies, including, if it prefers, in the West. Trump also made clear there would be no additional U.S. sanctions—at least for now—on Russia or the third countries, like China, India, and Turkey, helping it fight the war.  

It was a shameful performance by any standard and a low point for American global leadership. The question now: will Trump insist that Ukraine and Europe follow him down the path of negotiating on Putin’s terms—or can Kyiv and its European allies, at the upcoming meeting in Washington and the weeks and months ahead, persuade Trump to hold firm, resisting not just Putin’s preposterous claims on Ukrainian territory he has been unable to seize after more than a decade of fighting, but also his efforts to dictate a return to something like the Cold War division of Europe? 

Ultimately, it’s a choice about how to end the war: the easy way—Trump’s way, giving in to Putin’s demands—or the hard way, by helping Ukraine hold its ground. 

If we choose the hard way, the sad truth is there’s no magic wand and no real alternative to the tools the West is already using—arming Ukraine, punishing Putin economically, and insisting on our values, starting with the principle that borders can’t be redrawn by force. But we need to get serious about using these tools, wielding them like we mean it with a more clear-eyed understanding of the stakes. 

What’s needed is a three-pronged effort. 

The first leg of the stool is military assistance. On the third anniversary of the 2022 invasion, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy published a report reflecting on data it has been collecting since the fighting began—a precise accounting of the military, budgetary, and humanitarian aid donated by Ukraine’s Western allies. Both Europe and the U.S. have spent well over $125 billion. Europe has disbursed considerably more than the U.S.—nearly 50 percent more as of June 30—and its share is rising sharply, while Washington’s is now flat.  

Most large donors, including Germany, the U.S., and Britain, have allocated just 0.2 percent of annual GDP, while smaller countries, mostly in southern Europe, have spent no more than 0.1 percent. German subsidies for diesel fuel cost taxpayers three times more per year than German military support for Ukraine. Overall, the institute concludes, “aid to Ukraine … looks more like a political ‘pet project’ than a major fiscal effort.”  

So too with the second pillar, economic pressure. Both Europe and the U.S. have passed many packages of sanctions on Russia, and these measures have inflicted significant damage over the years. But Moscow keeps finding ways to get around Western restrictions—and despite Trump’s repeated threats to tighten the economic screws, U.S. sanctions enforcement has dwindled dramatically on his watch. 

Europe’s 18th package of sanctions, passed in mid-July, is a step in the right direction. The most important and novel provision ties the cap on the price at which Russia can legally sell its crude oil to real-time fluctuations of the global going rate. Most Western nations have sharply reduced consumption of Russian oil since 2022, but it still accounts for some 40 percent of Moscow’s exports and one-third of its total budget. A vast “shadow fleet“ of aging, uninsured vessels carry Russian oil to China, India, and other third countries, and as the price has fallen in recent months—it’s now $63.80 per barrel—the $60 cap instituted in 2022 doesn’t mean much. The new European sanctions up the ante by reducing the cap to $47.60 and tying it to market fluctuations. But this will have a limited effect unless the U.S. also lowers the cap—and so far, Washington has shown no interest in doing so. 

Also needed: much more granular enforcement of sanctions against shadow tankers and tighter restrictions on third-country trade with Russia—third-country imports of Russian goods, third-country banks financing the Russian economy, and third-country exports of dual-use technology essential for the Russian war machine. China is the big culprit here. In 2024, Beijing sold Moscow some $4 billion worth of electronic equipment and machine tools—everything from integrated circuits to semiconductor testing machines—that Russia used to make missiles, drones, tanks and other weaponry. Both Europe and U.S. are hesitant to impose tough sanctions on China, and the 100 percent tariff Trump has talked about in recent weeks would likely hurt Americans as much as China or Russia. But we need to find other, more effective ways of separating Moscow and Beijing.  

The third and perhaps most important leg of the stool has more to do with resolve than force majeure. More military assistance and sharper economic pressure will not change Putin’s mind overnight—and may not in the long run enable Ukraine to liberate the nearly 20 percent of its territory now under Russian occupation. But if we mean what we say, we need to stay the course until Putin sees that he cannot win the war on his terms.  

Trump’s on-again, off-again support for Ukraine sends the worst possible signal. So do respectful summits with red-carpet treatment and backchannel promises of lucrative East-West economic cooperation. What’s needed is to tighten the screws on Putin and increase his isolation. This may not bear fruit in the short term—there will be no quick, easy victories, and Trump will not win the Nobel Peace Prize. But we must make clear to Putin that the West will not give in on the “root causes” that are driving him to prosecute the war in Ukraine. Moscow must come to see that the costs of the conflict ultimately exceed the benefits, and he must understand, without any doubt, that the Kremlin cannot outwait the West.  

Can the West reverse course now, undoing the damage Trump did in Alaska? If anything, the president seems to be doubling down on his mistake, calling for a trilateral summit—the U.S., Russia, and Ukraine—to pick up where he and Putin left off.  

Zelensky and European leaders coming to Washington today seem willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, agreeing to participate in whatever next steps he sees fit. We can only hope that they or perhaps another show of Putin’s true reluctance to end the war will help Trump see the light before the U.S. insists on a meeting to make peace on Russia’s terms, ceding the principle that might makes right and big countries can do as they wish with their smaller neighbors. 

The post How to Reverse Trump’s Capitulation to Putin  appeared first on Washington Monthly.

The city of Sloviansk, prewar population just over 100,00, sits smack in the middle of the territory Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will discuss “swapping” when they meet on Friday in Alaska—the first U.S.-Russia summit since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Moscow and Kyiv have been fighting over Sloviansk more or less nonstop for more than 11 years, since Russian proxies first tried to take over the Donetsk province in 2014. With one exception—three months in spring 2014—the city has remained in Ukrainian hands. 

Now, as world leaders talk over Ukrainians’ heads about giving up Sloviansk without another shot fired, I sat down with two soldiers who have been defending the city for over a year. Vlad Huma, 38, and Hlib Velitchenko, 32, say a swap of the kind Putin has proposed is unthinkable. But they know the conversation won’t end there, and they are girding for the worst. 

Sloviansk is one of four front-line cities that make up what the Institute for the Study of War calls Ukraine’s “fortress belt,” a north-south defensive line some 300 miles east of Kyiv. After more than a decade of fighting, the line is heavily fortified—one of the most effective bulwarks holding off the Russian advance. In the last three and a half years of all-out war, both sides have lost thousands of men—tens of thousands of Ukrainians, hundreds of thousands of Russians—with little change on the ground. In the year Huma and Velitchenko have spent in Sloviansk, the front has shifted just 3.2 miles west. “We measure it in meters, not kilometers,” Huma explained.  

At that rate, it would take the Russians more than a decade to conquer the territory Putin is asking Trump to give him in exchange for a ceasefire. The so-called swap—it’s not clear what territory Russia is being asked to give up—would also put the Kremlin in a much better position to take the rest of Ukraine, starting with the Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk provinces just to the west, which would be left relatively defenseless once Moscow controlled the fortress belt.  

Years of fighting have transformed the region around Sloviansk. Thousands of Ukrainian fighters live garrisoned in the half-destroyed villages scattered around the city, mostly in modest houses with well-tended gardens and old fruit trees now abandoned by the people who once lived there. The city itself is a bustling logistical hub, filled with men in fatigues and the businesses that support them—barbers, garages, military clothing shops, construction supply stores, and cafes. (There is no alcohol for sale anywhere along the fortress belt.) 

Population estimates vary widely, and the residents who remain are deeply tired of the war. Although there has been no fighting in the streets since 2014, Sloviansk is the target of constant shelling, including by deadly Russian glide bombs that can take out an entire house.  

According to a June survey by the Kyiv International Institute for Sociology, some 56 percent of the region’s residents—compared to 43 percent of Ukrainians nationwide—could accept de facto recognition of Russian control of the territory Moscow has already seized. “But that’s completely different from giving up territory Moscow hasn’t conquered yet,” institute executive director Anton Hrushetskyi explains. And although eastern Ukraine was once more Russia-friendly than the rest of the country, that has changed dramatically since 2022. According to the most recent polling, in October 2024, 88 percent of residents now have a “bad” or “very bad” opinion of Russia.  

Huma and Velitchenko are part of an elite drone unit that works out of Sloviansk, defending the front and supporting soldiers on the ground some 20 miles to the east. No fighter in their battalion—mostly drone pilots and IT technicians—has been killed in the year since the two men joined. But the unit has sustained more serious injuries than they care to count, and the brigade they support has lost a large number of men. “You can’t fight an infantry war without dead soldiers,” explains Velitchenko, a rail thin man with a bushy Cossack mustache who worked for an IT firm before enlisting in the armed forces. “We have already paid for this territory—with the lives we lost defending it.”  

Neither Huma nor Velitchenko think it’s likely that Ukraine will give up the Donetsk province. “That’s against the constitution,” says Huma, a beefy man with a buzz cut and a scarred right eye. “It’s not going to happen.” But they fear the PR damage could be almost as bad. “Putin wants to make us look like the obstacle to peace,” Huma explains. “He’s setting a condition he knows we can’t meet, so we come off as the bad guy determined to prolong the war.” 

Both men have a deeply cynical view of Trump as someone driven exclusively by money and self-regard. “When money rules,” Huma says, “lives are cheap—especially Ukrainian lives.” When I ask what recourse Ukraine will have if Trump insists on a swap, they remind me of a scene caught on video in autumn 2019, well before the full-scale invasion. Velitchenko whips out his phone and finds the clip, which went viral at the time on social media, provoking a bitter national debate.  

A young-looking, clean-shaven Zelensky visits an armed unit in the town of Zolote, some 40 miles east of Sloviansk and now occupied by Russian troops. The newly elected president is insisting the Ukrainians retreat from what was then still a contested flashpoint on the front line between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists. But the uniformed men refuse, and a nasty quarrel ensues. 

“Ukrainians will go on fighting one way or another,” Huma explains, “with or without the U.S.” Compared to the American army, he says, “we aren’t well equipped. We don’t have everything we need to win. But we’re very good at stretching what we have—and we will fight to the last Ukrainian.” 

“You don’t understand,” Velitchenko broke in. “You don’t understand what’s at stake. No, we don’t want to give up this land where we’ve fought for a year and watched our comrades fall.” But for him, he says, it’s not about territory. “I don’t want to live in a world without rules—where someone can break into my house just because he has a gun.” Both Putin and Trump, Velitchenko believes, thrive in a world without rules. But he can’t live like that. “That’s what I’m fighting for,” he tells me. 

Bottom line for both men: they can’t imagine taking what they call a “pause” in the fighting, especially not under pressure from a careless, fickle American president. “If we give up now,” Huma explains, “we’ll just make it easier for the enemy in the next round—and make no mistake, there will be a next round. It’s either me now or my children in a few years—fighting a stronger Russia with a big advantage on the ground. I’d rather finish it now.” 

The post Ukrainian Fighters Aren’t Expecting Much from the Trump-Putin Summit  appeared first on Washington Monthly.

The Russian reaction wasn’t long in coming. Just hours after President Donald Trump met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office on Monday to announce new missiles for Ukraine and 100 percent tariffs on Russia if the two countries can’t agree to a ceasefire in 50 days, the Moscow Stock Exchange Index rose sharply. Russian investors, expecting worse from Washington, were apparently relieved by the outcome of the meeting.

Later that day, Senator Konstantin Kosachev, chair of the foreign affairs committee in the Russian parliament’s upper house, dismissed the news from the White House as “much ado about nothing.” “Over 50 days, a whole lot can change on the battlefield,” he wrote menacingly on social media, “and in the moods of those in power in the U.S. and NATO. But our mood won’t be affected.”

The Oval Office announcement signals a dramatic shift in Trump’s thinking about the Russia-Ukraine war. After insisting for months that Ukraine was the problem—responsible for the conflict, and reluctant to make peace—the 47th president finally seems to see that Russian President Vladimir Putin is the one who won’t lay down arms. This is a significant breakthrough, and if Trump follows through on the new strategy, it could change the course of the war. But many potential pitfalls lie ahead—in Europe, Washington, and Moscow.

The resumed weapons shipments will differ from traditional military aid in two critical ways. First, no “aid” is involved—the U.S. will not give Ukraine anything further. Trump is offering instead to sell a big new batch of air-defense batteries, long-range missiles, and ammunition for use by the Ukrainian armed forces.

Second, unlike most lethal assistance, the sale involves an intermediary. Washington will sell the new weaponry to NATO members—Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Canada, to begin with—which will then pass it on, free of charge, to Ukraine. The first tranche is expected to include some $10 billion worth of matériel, with more—potentially much more—coming later.

This ingenious mechanism, proposed originally by Volodymyr Zelensky, solves a lot of problems. Trump remains true to his idée fixe, “America first,” advancing both U.S. financial interests and his personal ambition to dominate world affairs. Ukraine gets the weaponry it desperately needs to defend itself against an ever-more rapacious Russia. Europe mends its fraying ties with the U.S. and fends off a Ukrainian defeat that many on the continent fear could bring large numbers of hardened Russian troops and battle-tested weaponry to the borders of NATO.

Also important, although NATO will coordinate arms shipments to Ukraine, the aid will flow bilaterally—through national capitals, not NATO Headquarters in Brussels. So there will be no need for all of Europe to agree unanimously—a requirement that has held up package after package of European Ukraine aid and sanctions for four years.

The only problem: adding steps adds complexity and new ways of things going wrong.

The questions begin with Europe. Like Americans, European voters are increasingly skeptical of open-ended aid to Ukraine. Germany’s fragile coalition government, expected to take the lead in the new assistance plan—it proposes to purchase two Patriot air-defense missile batteries priced roughly $1.1 billion a piece—faces growing anti-war opposition from both the right and the left.

Support is more solid in the Nordic countries, and Europe as a whole has outpaced the U.S. in military and budgetary assistance to Ukraine, providing some $182 billion in aid compared to our $134 billion. But even the best-intentioned and tightly focused European efforts have sometimes struggled to deliver as promised. Remember the “coalition of the willing” created this spring to send peacekeeping troops? The challenge now: translating good intentions into large weapons shipments that arrive in time to make a difference on the ground.

Second, and even more uncertain, it’s unclear how long Trump’s dramatic shift in thinking will last. His attitude toward Vladimir Putin veered from warm to cold and back to warm again over the 35 minutes he and Rutte spent in the Oval Office. The president began relatively optimistically, going as far as to say he didn’t think Congress needed to pass a tough pending sanctions bill—implying that the mere threat of tariffs would probably bring Putin to the negotiating table. Then, shifting gears, Trump stopped just short of calling the Russian strongman a criminal: “I don’t want to say he’s an assassin. But he’s a tough guy.” Minutes later, the tone of the conversation shifted again with Trump blandly reassuring listeners not once but several times, “I think we’ll get it done”—as if a sustainable ceasefire was just beyond reach.

Meanwhile, even as he tried to pivot, the president held fast to many of his old, mistaken claims about the war. He’s still exaggerating how much the U.S. has spent to arm Ukraine, claiming $350 billion—more than double what we have disbursed. He continues to insist that the conflict is Joe Biden’s war, even as he considers enabling Kyiv to hit Moscow and St. Petersburg with long-range missiles. (Perhaps not surprisingly—another sign of just how tenuous and uncertain the new strategy is—as soon as it came out that Trump had suggested long-range strikes on Russia in a phone conversation with Zelensky, the White House disavowed the news. Trump “was merely asking a question,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted, “not encouraging further killing.”)

Trump can’t let go of the idea that Kyiv played a significant part in starting the war, and he continues to assert what he calls his “parameters” for peace—a deeply unfair deal that would formally cede large chunks of Russian-occupied territory and bar Ukraine from joining NATO. Perhaps most troubling, even as he threatens the Kremlin, Trump can’t disguise his deep admiration for Russia or his ambivalence about Ukraine, and he hasn’t closed the door on a better relationship with Putin. “I’m disappointed in him, but I’m not done with him,” the president told the BBC shortly after he met with Rutte.

The third and most disquieting question mark hanging over the new strategy is Russia. Nothing Putin or his proxies have said since the start of the war supports Trump’s belief that the Kremlin is prepared to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine. Putin has put the Russian economy on a wartime footing, turbocharging the defense industry, diverting millions to military salaries, and flooding the provinces with exorbitant bounties for families of fallen soldiers. Neither he nor Russian popular opinion seem fazed by the million men killed or injured in the conflict. Despite his army’s plodding and costly progress, Putin appears convinced he is winning on the battlefield.

No matter how sharply the West presses him, Putin repeats the same nonnegotiable demands. There can be no peace until what he calls the “root causes” of the war have been addressed. Ukraine must accept permanent neutrality between East and West. Its military must be neutered and its politics distorted to allow unhindered Russian interference. Moscow continues to claim large swathes of Ukrainian territory it hasn’t conquered and demands a legally binding promise that NATO stop expanding eastward.

Putin has made some effort to humor Trump. He would clearly like a thaw in U.S.-Russia relations and a resumption of trade with the West. But nothing suggests these goals are more important to him than his lifelong dream of restoring what he calls the “Russkiy Mir,” the Russian world or “Russian civilization”—an extended sphere of influence and control encompassing any lands once dominated by the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union. “Putin values the relationship with Trump and had good discussions with [White House special envoy Steve] Witkoff,” an anonymous source close to the Kremlin told Reuters this week after the Rutte meeting. “But the interests of Russia come above all else.”

None of this bodes well for Trump’s dream of ending the war. The president may ultimately be right that strengthening Zelensky is the best way to bring Putin to the table, but that strategy will only work if the pressure is concerted and consistent. Comments coming out of Moscow since the Trump-Rutte meeting—including a veiled nuclear threat from Kremlin senior aide, Kirill Dmitriev—suggest Putin sees Trump’s new push for the half-hearted feint it is. The Russian is still determined, as Trump himself has put it, to “go all the way“ in Ukraine, capturing as much territory as he needs to break the back of Ukrainian nationhood.

The only silver lining: credulous and grudging as Trump may be and still deluded about Putin, the new NATO strategy stands a fairly good chance of delivering badly needed arms and ammunition to Ukraine, where nobody in a position to use it has any illusions about Putin.

The post Dramatic Shift in Trump’s Thinking About the Russia-Ukraine War appeared first on Washington Monthly.

It’s the other side of the coin: the resilience that has impressed the world since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Ukrainians don’t frighten easily or get discouraged, but they don’t impress easily either. Donald Trump’s shift on Ukraine last week, sending U.S. weaponry to Kyiv after the Pentagon had held it up, has been met with skepticism, black humor, and hope.

“Wow, 10 Patriot missiles,” someone calling himself Jerzy posted sarcastically in a July 8 Telegram chat after Trump reversed the pause of weapons deliveries. Shortly after the president’s remarks, sources revealed he was planning to send a small first shipment of these prized air-defense interceptors—the only weapons that can shoot down the high-speed ballistic missiles Moscow now launches at Ukrainian cities virtually every night. “Ridiculous,” “insulting,” “a mockery,” others chimed in on the chat before someone named Reti nailed the case: “Ukraine will easily fire 10 Patriot missiles in the space of an hour defending themselves from Russia,” he explained. Sources say it generally takes three or four interceptors to stop one Russian ballistic missile, and in just two days last week, Moscow hit Ukraine with a total of 14 rockets.

The skeptics could be wrong. If it holds, Trump’s shift is dramatic, potentially a historic turning point. After suggesting for months that Ukraine was the problem—responsible for the war and the obstacle to peace—Trump finally seems to recognize that it’s Vladimir Putin who doesn’t want to stop fighting. “We get a lot of bullsh*t thrown at us by Putin,” the president told a Cabinet meeting last week. “But it turns out to be meaningless.”

The 47th president also seemed to acknowledge that the U.S. can’t just abandon Ukraine. “We are going to have to send more weapons,” he told reporters, “defensive weapons. [The Ukrainians] have to defend themselves.”

But as promising as Trump’s shift may seem, it’s only as valuable as what comes next. The president had some success last month using strong language—an F-bomb—to pressure Israel and Iran to accept a ceasefire. But unlike Jerusalem and Tehran, Putin isn’t deterred by a four-letter word.

Trump had lambasted the Russian strongman before and seemed to tilt momentarily in favor of Ukraine, only to revert to form days later. Meanwhile, despite threats, Washington hasn’t taken action against Moscow—no new tariffs, increased sanctions, or additional weapons appropriations for Ukraine since Trump returned to the White House.

What’s needed now: Trump must quickly follow talk with action before Moscow changes the facts on the ground in Ukraine.

Moscow is several weeks into a savage summer offensive—what captured Russian officers have been told is “one last push” to seize more territory and break Ukrainian morale. Russian soldiers are massing along the front line and making small but growing inroads near critical chokepoints. Drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities have escalated sharply in recent weeks, growing fiercer than ever in the days since Trump reversed the weapons pause.

A year ago, a typical nightly bombardment consisted of 10 to 25 drones nationwide, with cruise and ballistic missiles reserved for a rare extra wallop. The barrage early Tuesday, June 9, after Trump’s apparent change of heart, was the biggest aerial attack of the war: 728 drones and 13 missiles. The count on July 10 was 397 drones, 10 cruise missiles, and eight of the especially deadly ballistic missiles. Ukraine needs help—American and European help—to fight off this intensifying assault.

Few strategists expect Moscow to make decisive gains this summer, seizing the lion’s share of Ukrainian territory or toppling the government. No one anticipates that Kyiv will liberate the fifth of the country held by Russia any time soon. But Trump’s proposed approach—helping Ukraine defend itself—is not enough.

Defense by itself, with no offense, is just a way of losing more slowly, as Trump of all people should know. That was Joe Biden’s failing strategy: Give Ukraine just enough military aid to avoid defeat but not enough to win the war. What’s needed now: enough military assistance and economic pressure to change Russia’s calculus of the war’s costs and benefits and give Ukraine the upper hand in negotiations.

Ideally, Trump would encourage Congress to pass a big military-aid package. That may be too much to hope for in the near term. But the president can and should take three critical steps to implement his new understanding of Ukraine’s plight: tighten U.S. sanctions on Moscow, open the door for Europe to use its considerable economic leverage over Russia, and allow Ukraine and its proxies in Europe to purchase weapons directly from U.S. defense contractors.

Tough new sanctions legislation co-sponsored by Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal would bar energy transactions with Russian banks and punish countries like China and India that still buy Russian oil and gas despite Western curbs. The bill from the South Carolina Republican and Connecticut Democrat would subject these third countries to 500 percent tariffs on their exports to the U.S. It leaves ample leeway for Trump to delay imposing penalties. But the president is pushing for an even freer hand. This loophole should be resisted.

Still, the bill has 85 Senate co-sponsors, and House Speaker Mike Johnson says there is “interest” in the House. If implemented in the coming months, it could severely damage the Russian economy, already teetering on the brink of recession after three years of choking civilian businesses to supercharge weapons production and military salaries. Meanwhile, in a separate step, Trump could redouble American economic pressure by cracking down on countries that buy U.S. technology and resell it to Moscow for use in Russian missiles and fighter jets.

Europe can help. In 2021, the European Union did nearly eight times as much business with Russia as the U.S. did—roughly $270 billion in total trade versus $36 billion—and Europe, too, is poised to tighten the economic screws on Moscow.

A proposed 18th package of EU sanctions would expand restrictions on Russian energy imports, ban business with second-tier Russian banks, and block exports of Western technology used in Russian drone and weapons production. But the bloc has struggled to pass the measure, hamstrung by opposition from Russia-friendly Hungary and Slovakia. What Trump could do to help: put pressure on MAGA allies in both countries to push the package over the finish line.

American participation would open the door to the EU’s biggest proposed blow to the Russian economy, cutting the West’s 2022 oil price cap from $60 to $45 a barrel. Perhaps even more potent, encouraging signals from Trump could help persuade European holdouts to move toward seizing the €300 billion in Russian assets frozen in Western banks since the 2022 invasion.

But economic pressure alone is unlikely to suffice. Russia must also feel it on the battlefield. Putin needs to see the futility of prolonging the war and sustaining current losses of more than 1,000 soldiers a day.

Volodymyr Zelensky has been talking for months about putting Ukraine’s relationship with the U.S. on a new footing, shifting away from traditional military aid, an unlikely prospect in Trump’s Washington, to buying U.S. weapons directly from American manufacturers, as allies from Poland to Taiwan do.

At first, Trump blew off the idea of direct sales, but he appears to be coming around. Ultimately, Europe would have to provide most or all of the funding, either as aid to the cash-strapped Ukraine or by contracting directly with U.S. manufacturers. But both Germany and Norway have expressed interest in purchasing Patriot missile systems for Kyiv, and Trump told reporters last week that the U.S. would now send weapons to Ukraine through NATO, with the alliance paying for those weapons “a hundred percent.”

This is still just a fledgling idea. U.S. weapons sales are highly regulated, with both exports and future use subject to exacting federal oversight, and negotiations are just getting started. But if the idea works for Patriots, it could be applied to a broad range of weapons sales—everything Ukraine can’t make itself and Europe can’t supply.

Just how far will Trump go? Even now—even recognizing that Putin is the aggressor and the U.S. can’t walk away—he maintains that the Ukraine conflict is Biden’s war. But it’s hard to see how he can have it both ways. Selling rather than giving arms and working through NATO are fig leaves. Unless he reverses himself yet again—softening his tone on Russia and reengaging with the Kremlin—Trump is on track to own the war.

Of course, another 180-degree turn is possible, and few in Ukraine or Europe are counting on the mercurial president to stay the course. According to the latest polling, 60 percent of Ukrainians are prepared to endure the war for “as long as necessary,” and 74 percent support fighting on even without U.S. support. The one thing they know for sure is that no matter what Trump does next, his promise to end the war still hinges on Putin, and the Kremlin shows no sign of relenting.

The post Trump’s Shift on Ukraine is Welcome, but Now What? appeared first on Washington Monthly.