There will be no peace in Ukraine before the fourth anniversary of the outbreak of war. The latest round of negotiations, which began in late November, has stalled. On one side, the Kremlin sees the Donbas region – more than three quarters of which it already occupies – as the minimum war prize; it also intends to obtain some form of international recognition and various restrictions that would deprive Kyiv of the means to retake it militarily.

On the other side, European governments oppose any redrawing of borders by force, which they see as a precedent that would encourage Moscow to push ahead with its expansion plans. They say they remain ready to ‘support Ukraine for as long as necessary, while keeping up the pressure on Russia in pursuit of a just and lasting peace’. But without the means to achieve this, their resolve makes them increasingly dependent on Washington, the main supplier of weapons and the cornerstone of security guarantees in any potential peace deal. This comes at the very moment when Donald Trump’s administration has enshrined its hostility towards the European Union in its 2025 National Security Strategy.

So there is a paradox: while continually raising the spectre of a Russian attack, the Europeans would prefer to downplay the very real threat of the US annexing Greenland (see Why Trump’s Greenland fixation?, in this issue). They deploy a handful of soldiers there, but then immediately claim it is all to protect the island from imaginary Russian and Chinese incursions. The German chancellor even recalled his troops ‘to avoid any escalation in this dispute if at all possible’, and urged Paris to back down, in order to preserve ‘a united Europe’ and a ‘strong’ NATO.

This denial of American hostility toward European countries simply reinforces Moscow’s belief that they are mere vassals of the US. So the Russians keep on fighting while waiting for Trump to lose interest in Ukraine – which, in their view, (…)

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