Europe braces for a transatlantic rupture as Trump shifts towards Moscow

European leaders are increasingly resigned to the idea that Donald Trump is no longer merely an unpredictable partner on Ukraine, but a president whose instincts now appear to favour Moscow’s position. After a week in which he moved to dismantle parts of the pressure campaign against Russia, urged Kyiv to stop striking oil infrastructure and cast doubt on Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s legitimacy, officials in Brussels are bracing for a transatlantic split that may prove far more serious t...

The shift has landed at a difficult moment for Ukraine and for its backers. Winter is approaching, Russian strikes on energy facilities are intensifying and Kyiv is short of Patriot interceptors, the American-made missiles needed to shoot down incoming Russian attacks. Ukraine’s wartime financing is also under strain, with Europe struggling to make up the gap as military spending rises and infrastructure damage mounts. In Brussels this week, the mood among several leaders was one of alarm rather than surprise, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Trump’s latest decisions have deepened those concerns. Axios reported that he announced what he called an “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine, pressing both sides to stop attacking refineries and other energy assets, while expecting Kyiv to comply. But the proposal has been widely viewed as skewed: Ukraine has little Russian energy capacity to hit compared with the scale of Russia’s refinery network, and Moscow has not agreed to a broader halt in hostilities. Russian strikes continued shortly after the announcement, including renewed attacks on Ukraine’s power system.

Zelenskyy has made clear he regards the American turn as both damaging and unfair. In an interview with Axios, he described Washington’s lifting of some sanctions on Russia and its allowance of diesel exports as “not fair and not honest”. He suggested that he might have understood an easing of energy restrictions if it had been tied to a genuine pause in attacks on infrastructure over the winter, but said the timing and substance of Trump’s move had taken Kyiv by surprise.

For European governments, the immediate challenge is political as much as military. Officials are trying to preserve support for Ukraine without openly rupturing relations with Washington, because the United States still provides intelligence that remains central to Kyiv’s defence. One European official said privately that if that intelligence were to disappear, there would be no easy substitute. That reality has prompted many in the EU to urge Zelenskyy to avoid publicly escalating his quarrel with Trump, even as they themselves grow more uneasy.

There are reasons for that caution. Trump has already clashed bitterly with Zelenskyy before, including a notorious Oval Office confrontation that briefly disrupted intelligence sharing. He later pushed a peace blueprint that heavily favoured Russian interests, prompting warnings from Kyiv that Ukraine risked losing its key ally. More recently, European leaders spent months trying to nudge Trump towards a more sympathetic stance, including through carefully choreographed encounters at summits where Zelenskyy presented images of damage caused by Russian bombardment.

Those efforts now look fragile. According to people briefed on the talks in Brussels, some leaders concluded this week that Trump’s default position is to squeeze Ukraine rather than pressure the aggressor. Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, warned as she arrived for discussions that the western alliance was in a weaker position than only days earlier, and said failure to back Ukraine would leave Europe and Nato more exposed. EU foreign ministers, meeting privately on Monday, reportedly agreed that their policy line should remain steady regardless of how erratic Washington becomes.

That position is now clearer in public as well. Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, said in Brussels that Europe sees the war differently from Washington, arguing that the proper way to end it is to pressure the attacker, not the victim. France said its priority remained continued support for Kyiv, while Germany declined to comment immediately.

Trump’s motives are also being read through the lens of domestic politics. With midterm elections looming and petrol prices an obsession in Washington, Axios and other outlets have reported that the White House is eager to reduce fuel costs and is treating Russian diesel imports as one possible lever. Yet analysts note that global prices are being affected by a wider range of factors, including US policy towards Iran, making the Ukrainian strikes on refineries only one part of a far larger energy picture.

Meanwhile, the diplomatic channel Trump promised to use to end the war has struggled to produce results. Meetings in Florida over the weekend reportedly recycled ideas drafted months earlier by his envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, while planned travel to Moscow has been delayed. Putin may yet see Trump at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in China next month, a setting where neither Zelenskyy nor the Europeans will be present.

For now, Europe is stuck with a difficult calculation: keep Ukraine armed, keep talking to Trump and hope the relationship can still be managed. But the underlying fear in Brussels is that the United States may no longer be trying to tilt the battlefield against Russia at all. If that proves true, Europe will be left trying to sustain Ukraine through the winter while its most powerful ally is, at best, standing aside and, at worst, moving in the opposite direction.

Source: Noah Wire Services