European leaders can now breathe a little easier after receiving assurances from U.S. President Trump that he’s not going to realize their worst nightmares and sell out Ukraine at a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday.
But only a little easier. With the fate of Ukraine being discussed by men as manipulative as Putin and as mercurial as Trump, there’s every danger things could take an unexpected turn when the two actually meet in Alaska.
Trump’s talk of land swaps in the past few days triggered terror on the European side that the U.S. was going to carve up Ukraine in a peace deal with Moscow, conducted over their heads.
A brisk whirl of diplomacy on Wednesday seemed to allay those fears — for now. The Europeans came out of a call convinced that Trump understood a ceasefire had to precede any discussion of land, and that Ukraine would need a place at the negotiating table.
Some Europeans even detected signs that the Americans, in a U-turn, were warming to a role in offering post-war security guarantees to Ukraine.
Trump knows Europe’s positions and “largely shares them,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in a statement after the call, echoing equally bullish statements from French President Emmanuel Macron and European Council President António Costa.
Latvia’s Prime Minister Evika Siliņa, whose country borders Russia, struck a similarly sanguine tone.
“We are all on the same page” with regard to a final peace deal, she told POLITICO.
“President Trump is an excellent and unique negotiator, so I believe he aims for the best possible outcomes of the talks,” added Siliņa, who was on a previous call of EU leaders with Vice President JD Vance.
That is, of course, what they have to say. Predicting what will actually happen is another matter.
One person familiar with Wednesday’s meeting sounded a note of caution. While “overall there was a positive atmosphere,” they told POLITICO, “Trump, as always, talked a lot about what he would do, but in a way that no one could say what exactly he was going to do.”
Trump’s views on Russia and on Putin, whom he once hailed as a “genius,” do seem to be hardening. Angling for a Nobel Peace Prize, he is promising “severe consequences” if Putin does not seem serious in Alaska about ending the war, presumably meaning that the U.S. will ramp up secondary sanctions on countries that trade with Russia.
But the Europeans are fully aware it is not so long since Trump publicly humiliated Zelenskyy, pushed Ukraine to pay for the costs of the war via a minerals deal and mused about the merits of big economic development deals with Putin. They will be very wary of Putin and Trump shifting the conversation to lucrative contracts for energy and rare earth minerals, and away from topics such as reparations and abducted children.
Has Vance changed his tune?
Even Vance, known as an arch-critic of Ukraine after his tirade against Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in February, had changed his views, according to a European official.
Another European official quipped: “People were pretty impressed by Vance, who is looking for solutions while being clear that Putin is the bad guy here.”
Holidaying in the U.K., Vance spent Saturday at the country retreat of U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy, where he met Rustem Umerov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, and Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy’s office.
Did that swing Vance? If so, only up to a point. On Sunday, he struck a pretty traditional line on Fox News: “We’re done with the funding of the Ukraine war business,” he said. “Americans, I think, are sick of continuing to send their money, their tax dollars to this particular conflict. But if the Europeans want to step up and actually buy the weapons from American producers, we’re OK with that, but we’re not going to fund it ourselves anymore.”
That doesn’t exactly sound like the U.S. is more interested in providing post-war security guarantees.
The attraction of being peacemakers, however, seems to be building traction in the administration. Vance later noted, at an air base in Britain on Wednesday, that Trump “said very simply that we are going to make it our mission as an administration to bring peace to Europe once again.”
Played by Putin
Jan Techau, head of Germany for Eurasia Group, a think tank, also cautioned that Trump entered the meeting with the Europeans with different objectives from them.
For Trump, the key is that he should not come out of the Alaska summit looking like a “loser.” That implication — that he could be outsmarted by Putin — makes him simmer with anger on his Truth Social account.
Techau said Trump and his administration were motivated to engage with the Europeans on Wednesday by a desire to understand Putin’s tactics and not to appear as having been “played” by him in Alaska.
“He [Trump] can’t completely read Putin. He understands that Putin has a different agenda than what he first thought. In this sense the Europeans are helpful to gain insight and to back him if everything goes down the drain,” the analyst added.
Fundamentally, there are also strong concerns that Putin may have no genuine desire to strike a deal. His fundamental goal — still unachieved — is to destroy a democratic, independent Ukrainian state.
There are “no huge expectations for Friday,” said one of the EU officials, while Techau argued that Putin could use the meeting to float a “meaningless” gesture such as suspending bombing in a particular Ukrainian region in an attempt to sway Trump into believing he wanted peace.
The European side is particularly worried that Trump could strike a deal with Putin that falls short of their demands — for example by calling on Ukraine to give up more territory or demanding that EU countries roll back sanctions against Russia as a precursor to a deal.
Kyiv and its European allies could reject a flawed deal. But if they do, Trump could then throw up his hands, declare that he has done his best and blame the Europeans for standing in the way of peace, Techau warned.
“This would be convenient for Trump. He can say the real enemies of peace are elsewhere: It’s the Ukrainians and the Europeans who stand in the way,” he said.
Indeed, Trump has yet to align with all of Europe’s demands for a final peace deal.
And perhaps most alarmingly, he is still continuing to echo narratives about the war in Ukraine that are sympathetic to Russia.
Before his call with EU leaders, Trump quoted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — Europe’s most outspoken opponent of Ukraine.
The Hungarian leader reportedly said that winning wars was what Russia does best.
Trump called that a “very interesting insight.”
Felicia Schwartz, Nette Nöstlinger in Berlin, Victor Goury-Laffont in Paris, Veronika Melkozerova in Kyiv, Esther Webber in London and Jacopo Barigazzi in Brussels contributed reporting.
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