Trump and Zelenskiy Leave the Door Open
In truth, it was difficult to expect any other outcome. Zelenskiy arrived in Florida with a position already coordinated with the Europeans, and Trump, for all his rhetorical contempt toward his European allies (voiced both in speeches and in the newly adopted National Security Strategy), cannot afford a full-blown public rupture with them. Not “not ready,” but precisely “cannot.”
From the end of the nineteenth century onward, U.S. global strategy has rested on continuous interaction with Europe. That system is now a century and a half old. Over this time, an enormous web of personal, business, political, and financial ties has taken shape, linking influential actors, political parties, and elite groupings on both sides of the Atlantic. We speak of the “collective West” for a reason. In essence it is a single political and economic space, and tearing it apart would be extraordinarily difficult. The consequences would be harsher than the collapse of the USSR.
We saw how hard it is to prise Europe away from the United States in 2022, when decades of mutually beneficial economic cooperation and the obvious threat of economic self-harm still failed to shift the balance in Europe’s favor. European politicians chose the risky and frankly adventurist course of following U.S. foreign policy. And it would be wrong to call that policy purely American. Every “color revolution” in the post-Soviet space was a joint Euro-Atlantic project, and during the 2014 Maidan the initiative remained with the EU right up until Victoria Nuland delivered her famously blunt verdict on Brussels’ role in appointing Ukraine’s new government.
Trump has not succeeded in persuading Europe that continued confrontation with Russia is pointless, damaging, and dangerous for Europe itself. In its current political and economic condition, the EU simply cannot afford the pause he proposes: to fix losses in Ukraine and step back. For Brussels, that would be a political catastrophe.
Since the EU continues to support Zelenskiy’s “never surrender” line, Trump is forced to “constructively discuss” their amendments to his peace proposals, amendments that inevitably metamorphose into fully independent plans bearing little relation to reality. He then, just as constructively, discusses these Euro-Zelenskiy plans with Putin, and everything circles back to where it started. But Trump is running out of time. In November 2026 the United States holds midterm elections. The active campaign phase begins in February–March. By then, the administration must fix its foreign-policy choice.
Republican candidates must go into the elections on a single platform aligned with the president’s position. Washington does not have the resources to sustain confrontation across every strategic theater at once. A choice must be made: continue the fight with Russia in Europe, or pivot to the Indo-Pacific. As noted above, Trump is not prepared to rupture the alliance with the EU, while the EU refuses to release the U.S. from the Ukrainian crisis. As a result, Trump’s “China plan” falls into question, while continued confrontation with Russia emerges as the logical way out of the strategic dead end.
The administration has not yet made a final decision. It is still trying to push the “China plan.” But the fact that Trump did not reject Zelenskiy’s twenty-point plan, which Moscow had already labeled absolutely unacceptable, and instead called it “90–95 percent agreed,” signals a clear tendency inside the White House: preservation of Western unity at almost any price.
Trump can continue saying how much he “likes” Putin and how bright the prospects of trade with Russia look, but this resembles little more than an awkward attempt to lure Moscow into unilateral concessions in exchange for promises that will never be honored. It is not Trump who would trade with Russia, but American business, and if lifting sanctions were truly profitable, that same business would have forced the issue long ago. Where U.S. economic interests were real, sanctions were either never introduced or quietly rolled back. For the U.S., the Russian market has never been central. For Russia, on the contrary, the American neo-colonial style of economic interaction has never been acceptable.
There are U.S. elites who sincerely want to break away from Europe, and Trump represents them, but they are not yet strong enough. They need another decade to consolidate their position before they can exit the Euro-Atlantic project with minimal pain. Which is why, as the deadline approaches (February–March, and no later than April), there is every reason to expect Trump to drift steadily toward accepting and supporting the Euro-Zelenskiy line.
Whether this will be accompanied by increased U.S. pressure on Russia is an open question. Trump is interested in preserving a non-confrontational channel with Moscow. The process may therefore end with loud regretful statements and threats of “super-duper sanctions,” without escalation crossing into something irreversible.
But one must also account for the escalation-seeking instincts of America’s European allies. Depending on how U.S. domestic politics align, the European position may prove decisive at the very moment when the Trump administration is forced to make its final choice.
In essence, nothing fundamentally new has happened. Few people ever seriously doubted that Trump’s maximum room for maneuver amounted to buying time and fraying the nerves of Ukrainians and Europeans alike. The best he can do now is to continue peace-talk rhetoric while ignoring Euro-Ukrainian attempts to escalate. The question is how long he can sustain that line, and what comes next. The political tradition of the United States, to which this administration is no exception, says that in any unclear situation Washington tends to choose confrontation.
That push toward confrontation will also be reinforced by Russia’s support for Iran, Venezuela, and China. These are precisely the fronts on which Trump hopes to succeed by striking a temporary bargain with Moscow. Only the other day, Sergey Lavrov reminded everyone that, in the event of a military conflict in the Indo-Pacific, Russia intends to fulfill its obligations to support China in full. This is not just a message to Trump. It is a message to the entire world that Moscow does not intend to play geopolitical swap-games. It also narrows Trump’s maneuvering space. If Russia is not going to leave China one-on-one with Washington, then it becomes “reasonable” for the U.S. to provide at least moderate support to the EU, which remains in confrontation with Russia.
The only question is where the line runs between “moderate support” and escalation. Trump will try to retreat slowly, under pressure from European hawks and domestic political necessity. Whether he will eventually execute a sharp pivot toward confrontation remains unclear.