More Trouble for Ukraine

Late on Monday the US halted the sale of weapons to Ukraine. It was a step that was not unexpected. Last week a meeting between Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US President Donald Trump turned into a slanging match that was telecast world-wide. Within days, Zelenskyy landed in Europe where he was feted by UK PM Keir Starmer and France’s President Emmanuel Macron.

The messaging across the Atlantic could not be more at odds. The US wants to quickly end the war while Ukraine is loath to do so unless it recovers a significant portion of the territory it has lost to Russia over the years since the war began. Any realistic appraisal of the situation will lead to the conclusion that recovering all its territory is a near impossible goal for Ukraine but one that it is unwilling to abandon. For any country to accede to the demand that it end a war in which it has lost a large chunk of its territory is a tough call. From that perspective, the Ukrainian motivations for continuing the war are understandable. That is perhaps the reason that Zelenskyy publicly said that, “An agreement on ending the war is very, very far away,” a statement that allegedly angered the US President.

There is, however, another reality as well: Ukraine has received large sums of money from the US and Europe to wage its war against Russia.  President Trump has claimed that the US has given more than $300 billion to Ukraine. The figure has been contested and many claim the actual figure is much lower. For example, the Kiel Institute, a German think tank, has said that until now the US has provided about 114.14 billion Euros in help—military, financial and humanitarian—to Ukraine. Europe has contributed another 113.13 billion Euros. These are two largest aggregate contributions to Ukraine. There are other, smaller, contributions as well.

In recent history, this is the single largest set of financial contributions by different countries to a single country for waging a war. In 2023 there were 59 state conflicts or wars/conflicts between different countries according to data tracked by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program at Uppsala University in Sweden. It is not clear if any party in any single conflict in that set has received as much support as Ukraine. This lends a different complexion to the Russia-Ukraine war. If the resources needed to continue the conflict are provided by a third set of countries, the incentives for ending the war are, to put it mildly, diminished. There is little wonder that Zelenskyy thinks this is a war that can be fought to the finish.

The US under Trump, has a very different set of priorities. As a country and as a people, the Americans are exhausted from “forever wars.” The costs of these wars—from the second Iraq War (2003-11), the war in Afghanistan and occupation (2001-2021) and a host of other engagements across the world—have cost the US dear in blood and treasure. Trump has vowed to end these adventures and for the moment, Ukraine is high on its list.

It is interesting to note that the maximum noise to continue with the war, euphemistically described as “supporting Ukraine,” comes from European leaders. But even in Europe, support for war in Ukraine among people there is at best lukewarm. A YouGov survey conducted in December found that while a majority of Europeans in Denmark, Sweden, Spain, Britain, Germany, Italy and France thought that Ukraine was not getting enough Western support, very few of them thought their countries should increase support to Ukraine. The figures are revealing. Of those surveyed, only 29% of Swedes thought their country should increase support to Ukraine—the highest among the countries surveyed—while only 11% Italians argued for more support. In the UK and France, the two countries openly pitching for Europe to “do more”, only 21% and 14% of those surveyed, respectively, said that support for Ukraine should be increased.

These attitudes mirror the rather schizophrenic attitudes to “helping” Ukraine in Europe. There are open cries for doing more but ultimately European governments want the US to provide a “backstop” or security guarantees for Ukraine. Zelenskyy himself has said that he doesn’t hold much water in a ceasefire but wants US “security guarantees.” This in effect means that the US will be forced to intervene on Ukraine’s side in case of a future conflict with Russia. The US is unwilling to do that.

Donald TrumpgeopliticsRussia-Ukraine conflictUkraine crisisVolodymyr ZelenskyyWeb Exclusive