A United States-led ceasefire agreement in Ukraine does not appear imminent, but Washington’s relationship with Moscow is growing ever warmer.
Russia and the US focused on bilateral issues in their second round of talks last Thursday, following their opening session in Riyadh nine days earlier.
Russia floated the idea of resuming commercial flights while the US discussed staffing its Moscow embassy. Neither side mentioned Ukraine in their official statements.
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova confirmed on Wednesday that, “There are no talks on the situation in Ukraine as yet.”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, “Some first draft provisions of such potential peace plans are appearing,” but not “a coherent institutionalised peace plan”.
Russia steps up war of words with European leaders
Since the White House debacle during which US President Trump and Vice President JD Vance led a shouting match against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russia has tried to drive a wedge between the Trump administration and Europe, as the continent rushes to support Ukraine and Washington pulls further away.
Zakharova has called French President Emmanuel Macron “detached from reality” in a press conference when he offered to share France’s nuclear deterrent. She referred to Ukraine’s European allies as the “war party”.
She called Zelenskyy’s “dressing down” in the White House a result of the “extreme moral degradation” of the “maniac leader of the Nazi regime”.
Alexander Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, on Sunday blamed Europeans rather than the US for military aid provided to Ukraine.
“The most lethal weapons are supplied by the UK, Canada, Italy, Germany, Romania, Estonia, and a number of other countries,” he said.
Even as its army claimed the village of Privolnoye in Donetsk on Wednesday, Peskov told reporters, “The Kyiv regime and Zelensky do not want peace. They want the war to continue.”
But Trump was a return to sanity, Russian officials said.
“We all understood that it was not Donald Trump who severed relations, but Joe Biden,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told an interviewer on Sunday, during which he rejected the idea of European peacekeepers.
“They claim to be training thousands of peacekeepers and providing them with air support, which is an audacious stance,” he said of the United Kingdom and France. “First and foremost, no one consults us. President Donald Trump understands the situation fully.”
Peskov told an interviewer on the Rossiya-1 news network, “The new [US] administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations. This largely coincides with our vision.”
Trump has echoed Russian arguments, telling Zelenskyy that Ukraine is not helping to achieve a ceasefire but prolonging the war.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian delegations are working with European allies to increase military aid, after another breach of US-Ukrainian relations on Friday led to a military and intelligence cutoff.
“The events of the last week have definitely produced an effect here in Oslo and in other countries,” Inna Sovsun, a Ukrainian member of parliament with knowledge of security and defence matters, told Al Jazeera.
She was in the Norwegian capital as part of a delegation negotiating an increase in military assistance.
“Norway is now considering increasing its support,” she said.
Poland announced a new, $200m package of military aid on Thursday.
“Hearing Trump say Ukrainians don’t want peace is unfair,” said Sovsun. “There is nothing I want more than for [my partner] to come home. But I also don’t want my son to go and fight in five years.”
Trump’s administration ‘clearly sides with Russia’
“There is no longer any pretence that the administration clearly sides with Russia,” said retired US general Ben Hodges, who commanded US forces in Europe from 2014 to 2018.
“This is a huge strategic mistake for the United States because our European allies are going to come together, they are going to help Ukraine either win or at least get to a much better situation, and Europe will have done it without us and despite us and we will have lost great influence and great credibility,” Hodges said.
US credibility was also likely to suffer in the Middle East and the Pacific, said the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
“The Russia-led bloc will likely see the United States abandoning Ukraine as an indicator that the United States will abandon its other allies and will seek to test the limits of US commitment around the world,” the ISW said, referring to Iran and North Korea.
During their fiery exchange, Trump and Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday for being “disrespectful”.
“I’ve empowered you to be a tough guy. I don’t think you’d be a tough guy without the United States … you’re not acting at all thankful and that’s not a nice thing,” said Trump.
The criticism carried a partisan sting.
“You went to Pennsylvania in October and campaigned for the opposition,” said Vance, referring to Zelenskyy’s appearance with then-President Joe Biden on the campaign trail.
Trump called his predecessor “a stupid president” for giving Ukraine “350 billion dollars” – a figure approximately three times what Zelenskyy, Biden and the EU say the US has provided.
Two days later, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer invited Zelenskyy to meet European leaders in London.
“Those willing will intensify planning now with real urgency,” Starmer said after the summit. “The UK is prepared to back this with boots on the ground and planes in the air, together with others.”
France had already offered troops to Ukraine last year. Ireland and Luxembourg joined the growing coalition this week.
“The European offer of ‘boots on the ground’ after a deal has helped reassure Ukraine. But the debate has now moved on. And what will count most of all is how far the UK and Europe are prepared to help Ukraine in defiance of the US,” said Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director-general of the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank in London.
But even as Europe stepped up, Washington stepped out, suspending all US military hardware and intelligence sharing on Tuesday at 2pm Kyiv time (12:00 GMT)– an unprecedented step in the three-year war.
“Everything that was not literally on Ukrainian soil at the time the freeze was announced was not delivered,” said Sovsun. That included Pentagon aid already approved by Congress, but not military supplies Ukraine was buying from private contractors in the US.
Europe ready to assume ‘responsibilities’: von der Leyen
ABC News quoted two unnamed US government officials saying 90 percent of Pentagon aid had been delivered to Ukraine before the cutoff.
Within hours of the cutoff, European Union executive chief Ursula von der Leyen said Europe could mobilise 800 billion euros ($866bn) in defence spending.
“Europe is ready to assume its responsibilities. Rearm Europe could mobilise up to 800 billion euros of defence expenditures for safe and resilient Europe,” she said.
Of that, 650 billion euros ($704bn) would come by relaxing borrowing limits for national governments, and about 150 billion euros ($162bn) by borrowing jointly through the EU. The EU has never before undertaken joint military debt or procurement.
The initiative was up for approval by the bloc’s leaders at a special summit on Thursday.
“Recent estimates suggest that only 20 percent of total military hardware supplied to Ukrainian forces is now from the US,” said Chalmers. “Fifty-five percent is home-produced in Ukraine and 25 percent from Europe and the rest of the world, but the 20 percent is the most lethal and important. Ukraine will not collapse – they already experienced an aid cutoff last year, but the effect will be cumulative.”
France’s President Emmanuel Macron went even further in replacing US security guarantees in Europe. During an address on Wednesday, he offered to potentially extend France’s nuclear deterrent to the continent.
“I have decided to start strategic discussions on the defence of the entire continent with our nuclear weapons. The decision will depend on the heads and commanders-in-chief of European countries,” Macron said in a televised message.
The UK and France are the only European nuclear powers.
Sovsun has been impressed with the European response so far.
“In the beginning, I was very pessimistic. But then the London summit came and other decisions,” she said. “I’m actually feeling better than I feared I might. We’ve seen the level of seriousness with which they’ve taken it.”
Zelenskyy had been about to sign an agreement granting the US exclusive rights to mine rare earths in Ukraine when he was unceremoniously thrown out of the White House on Friday.
“What we need to hear from President Zelenskyy is that he has regret for what happened, he’s ready to sign this minerals deal and that he’s ready to engage in peace talks,” said Trump’s national security advisor, Mike Waltz.
Zelenskyy on Tuesday offered a plan for a ceasefire, involving a POW exchange, a cessation of long-range strikes, and a truce in the Black Sea – but only if Russia reciprocated.
“Our meeting in Washington, at the White House on Friday, did not go the way it was supposed to be,” Zelensky wrote on X. “It is regrettable that it happened this way. It is time to make things right.”
Trump confirmed during a speech to Congress on Tuesday that he received a letter from Zelenskyy in which the Ukrainian president expressed readiness to enter peace negotiations.
One of the reasons for Zelenskyy’s disagreement with Trump was over his efforts to tie security guarantees into the rare-earths deal.
“Hopefully, we won’t have to send much [military assistance] because I’m looking forward to getting it done quickly,” Trump told a reporter during his White House conference with Zelenskyy.
Asked about that on a right-wing US network, Vance said, “The [Ukrainian] president knows that, look, if you want real security guarantees, if you want to ensure that [Russian president] Vladimir Putin does not invade Ukraine again, the very best security guarantee is to give Americans economic upside in the future of Ukraine. That is a much better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years.”
He later clarified he was not talking about the UK or France.
