During the Biden administration, the United States and Europe acted largely in sync on Ukraine policy. Yes, there were disagreements over the types of weapons systems the West should provide to Kyiv, whether Ukraine should be permitted to deploy long-range missiles to strike military targets on the Russian mainland, and how best to implement sanctions. But everybody agreed on the main objective: pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to the point where he viewed a diplomatic solution as preferable to a battlefield one.
That U.S.-European unity is now fraying.
President Donald Trump is no former President Joe Biden; he doesn’t particularly care about the details of a peace settlement in Ukraine. Instead, he sees the three-year, three-month running war as a waste of U.S. taxpayer money. It’s also clear that he doesn’t have much personal sympathy for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Biden was willing to let Zelensky dictate the pace of talks or even whether talks started at all. In contrast, Trump isn’t willing to wait. He wanted the entire conflict over yesterday. Biden called Putin “a butcher” and a man who should be sitting in the Hague for war crimes; Trump is loath to use any of this language and shows far greater deference toward the Russian leader.
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