IT was a warning delivered with characteristic directness. Accept Vladimir Putin’s peace demands or “he will destroy you”, US president Donald Trump is reported to have told his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy at their Washington meeting on October 17.
Zelenskyy had come looking for, among other things, a potential supply of US long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, but instead left the meeting not only comparatively empty-handed, but apparently upbraided by Trump.
By all accounts, it was a tense get-together, with one report in the Financial Times (FT) citing sources familiar with events saying that it at times descended into a “shouting match”.
At one point, Trump is said to have tossed aside maps of the front line in Ukraine and insisted that Zelenskyy accept Russia’s terms for ending the war – by handing over the entire eastern territory of Donbas, the epicentre of ongoing fighting in Ukraine.
If Zelenskyy salvaged anything from the meeting, however, it was the significant decision by Trump to agree to new sanctions against Russian oil giants Lukoil and Rosneft, suggesting that more sweeping measures should be taken against Russia’s lucrative energy sector.
“Sanctions that hit Russian oil – Russian oil infrastructure, Russian oil companies – are a big step, and I thank President Trump and all our partners who are implementing this,” Zelenskyy went on to say at a following meeting in London on Friday.
There he was welcomed at the Foreign Office by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte, Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen and Dutch prime minister Dick Schoof.
“Ukraine’s future is our future. What happens in the weeks and months ahead is pivotal for the security of the United Kingdom and all our allies across Nato and beyond,” insisted Starmer at the meeting.
He went on to announce how the UK “became the first country to sanction all of Russia’s oil majors,” including the same companies sanctioned by the US.
Some 20 or so other leaders, members of what has been dubbed the “Coalition of the Willing”, a group of countries that have pledged strengthened support for Ukraine, also joined the meeting via a video link.
In theory, at least, Zelenskyy should have been in much more comfortable company here than at the White House, given his European allies’ consistent pledge to give Ukraine the backing it needs to continue its fight against Russian aggression.
In fact, some analysts are of the view that despite Trump’s often oscillating position over the Russia-Ukraine war, Europe’s persistence in standing by Kyiv is paying off in real terms, with Washington’s latest significant shift on oil sanctions a case in point.
Writing in the New York Times (NYT), its chief diplomatic correspondent, Steven Erlanger, said the sanctions “put substance behind the European commitment to helping Ukraine stand up to Russia – ideally with, or if necessary, without – Trump at their side.”
The European leaders, continued Erlanger, “can also feel some satisfaction that their repeated interventions with Trump on behalf of Ukraine have finally produced at least some American pressure on Moscow”.
For three-and-a-half years now, Ukraine’s European allies have stood firm with Zelenskyy, getting members to agree on 19 sanctions packages and striking often less than ideal trade deals with the Trump administration to keep it onside.
Or, as another NYT summation of the relationship put it in a rather optimistic headline recently: “Ukraine’s Coalition of the Willing has the wind at its back.”
Consolidation of the Coalition of the Willing has been ongoing since early 2025, as Europe continues to try and convince the Trump administration that it is prepared to take the lead in efforts to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But chinks in that solidarity never seem far away.
Last week saw yet another obvious example when the leader of the European Union’s eighth-largest country dug his heels in over using confiscated Russian assets to pay for the bloc’s proposed €140 billion “reparation loan” for Ukraine.
The leader in question is Belgian prime minister Bart De Wever, who said last Thursday that his country needs concrete and solid guarantees before supporting a plan to use frozen Russian assets to fund the giant loan to Kyiv, pointing out that the plan is “uncharted territory”.
De Wever, a right-wing Flemish nationalist, is under pressure over the plan at home because he says the operation carries huge financial and legal risks for Belgium, one of the EU’s founding six members.
Belgium’s position is critical, as the assets in question are held at Euroclear, a central securities depository in Brussels.
“I’m not a bad boy,” De Wever quipped, referencing a Politico magazine article that had labelled him as such. “We’re the best boy in town. If you talk about immobilised assets, we are the very, very best.
“Can this (plan) be legal? That is a very good question ... There are no clear answers,” De Wever told reporters after attending an EU summit in Brussels where it was one of the subjects being discussed with EU leaders.
“We will, in any case, be buried in litigation. That seems like a certainty,” De Wever warned, noting that EU countries are still looking for a legal basis on which such a decision could be made.
“Every country in the European Union, and even in the broader coalition, if they want to help Ukraine by seizing Russian immobilised assets, that’s a measure that has never been taken in history before – not even during the Second World War,” De Wever was cited by the National News Agency of Ukraine as saying.
“Immobilised assets have always been left untouched. If we want to do this, then we have to carry the risks together,” De Wever went on, adding that they must be collective, they must be guaranteed, and all holders of such assets must act in co-ordination.
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With EU leaders failing to reach an agreement on how to handle the frozen assets during the summit, the issue is now likely to be discussed further at the next EU summit in December.
The “reparation loan” plan, as it stands, was announced last month by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who described it as a reliable and lawful way to make Russia pay for the damage it caused Ukraine.
For now though, given Belgium’s stance, it remains a bone of contention and indicative of the challenges Ukraine’s European allies face in presenting a unified front.
The question of money and frozen assets featured earlier too in September at the Paris summit. There at a press conference outside the Élysée Palace, French president Emmanuel Macron, flanked by Zelenskyy, announced that 26 nations were prepared to back security guarantees for Ukraine by land, sea, and air after a peace agreement is signed, but emphasised that no troops would be deployed to frontlines.
France, Britain, Estonia and Lithuania said they are ready to send ground forces once a deal is reached, with European military experts at the time discussing estimates ranging from 10,000 to 30,000 troops being needed.
But critics then as now say such summits tend to be less breakthroughs than performances.
“Yes, it was a step forward,” Marko Mihkelson, chair of the foreign affairs committee of the Estonian parliament, told The Parliament Magazine.
“But the focus right now should be not on what to do after the war but how to bring this war to an end.”
Mihkelson and others argue that debating post-war arrangements for Ukraine while the conflict rages risks dodging harder choices. They point also to levers European leaders have so far resisted, regardless of American involvement.
One of these is the aforementioned seizure and use of Russian assets. Another would be to deploy troops in Ukraine before a peace deal.
Speaking to The Parliament Magazine, Juraj Majcin, a defence analyst at the European Policy Centre, said forces could be stationed in cities like Kyiv or Odesa, freeing up Ukrainians to fight at the frontlines. He added that European troops could also take on logistical roles even from Nato territory.
“There are many more things we can be doing, but there’s no political appetite to do those things,” said Majcin, citing both asset seizure and troop deployments.
But last August, both a poll by Germany’s Forsa Institute and one by the European news website Euractiv, found that only 49% of Germans support participation in an international peacekeeping mission, and support was only 35% in Italy back in April.
Even if Europe wanted to act, Majcin told The Parliament magazine, co-ordination could prove difficult because Nato’s command and control structures run through the US.
But while European leaders try to keep up the economic and diplomatic pressure on Russia, their military commanders are continuing to put together plans to secure Ukraine in the event that Russia agrees to a ceasefire and peace negotiation.
That much was made clear in a NYT interview last month with Lt Gen Alexander Sollfrank, commander of the German Army’s joint force command.
“We, as the military, have to plan and think about and develop something which can then be used in a reasonable manner by the political masters,” insisted Sollfrank.
“A creative, well-designed military plan,” Sollfrank said, could function as a “kind of leverage” for diplomatic efforts to end the war.
But any calls to station European troops in Ukraine before – or even after – a peace deal is signed would likely face enormous political problems on a number of European domestic fronts.
Many observers maintain that Europe’s talking up of security guarantees and supporting Ukraine for as long as is necessary and with whatever it takes, remains something of an illusion.
IN the wake of last August’s Paris summit, the Centre for European Reform (CER) released a policy brief entitled: Can Europe Save Ukraine – And Itself – From Putin And Trump?
In the document, Ian Bond, deputy director of the CER, said that Europeans need to face up to four key facts.
The first is that Trump favours Putin over Zelenskyy and that the US is now doing relatively little to help Ukraine.
The second is that the Russians will not agree to Ukraine having any effective protection against future attacks. The security guarantee for Ukraine allegedly accepted by Putin in his meeting with Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, says Bond, is a mirage, and the US is reluctant to provide an insurance policy for European forces in Ukraine.
Thirdly, Putin remains determined to win, not compromise, and his peace terms would reduce Ukraine to vassal status.
And finally, says Bond, Trump has so far not been willing to put pressure on Putin by imposing further sanctions. Instead, he is offering Putin incentives to make any kind of deal that can be portrayed as peace.
Things, of course, have moved on since Bond’s assessment, as last week’s US announcement agreeing to new sanctions against Russia’s oil giants attests.
But from a European perspective, when viewed overall, Bond’s appraisal remains fairly accurate and his conclusions are equally stark.
“European governments must stop hoping that the war will be resolved with minimal effort from them – either because the US will deliver a peace deal, or because Ukraine will make big enough concessions to buy Putin off, or because Putin himself will conclude that the costs of the war are too high,” says Bond.
“If European leaders want to avoid confronting Russian forces on Nato territory, they will have to confront them in Ukraine and give up the illusion that the capricious Trump will save them from the rapacious Putin,” Bond summed up.
Things, as last week’s meeting in London again showed, remain that the optics through which the Coalition of the Willing presents itself focus on giving an impression of unity and political progress.
The reality on the ground in Ukraine though remains something else again. As long as this contradiction remains, the steadfastness of European solidarity will continue to be challenged – and run the risk of ultimately being broken.
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