Last Friday’s Oval Office meeting between U.S. president Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was supposed to end in a luncheon and an East Room signing ceremony for an agreement to mine certain of Ukraine’s strategic minerals (which Trump calls “raw earths”). Instead it ended with a shouting match, at the end of which Zelensky and his entourage were ejected from the White House while the food cooled on the catering carts.
Trump has not yet shown himself as reluctant to feed Zelensky’s war machine as he is to feed Zelensky’s delegation. But Ukraine is looking for a fallback plan in case the United States withdraws its support altogether. There really is no such viable plan. Which is probably why, late Sunday evening, Zelensky trumpeted his willingness to sign Trump’s minerals agreement.
The closest thing to a fallback is the European Union. The idea here is that EU leaders, along with British prime minister Keir Starmer, could take over leadership of the war from the tepid Trump. Starmer insists that “Russia does not hold all of the cards in this war” and (dubiously) that its economy is in shambles. France’s Emmanuel Macron has floated sending ground troops and has shown interest in a bilateral arms production agreement with Ukraine that would claim the interest income on $280 billion in seized Russian currency reserves. German newcomer Friedrich Merz is gung-ho.
All these Europeans subscribe to Joe Biden’s doctrine that the world is divided into democracies and autocracies, and place Russia on the wrong side of the divide. Sotto voce, they may put Trump there, too. In their own way they are adjusting to the new administration’s policy, articulated in Europe by Vice President J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: Pay up and step up.