View from London: It's official – Ukraine is now Trump's war

Trump supporters have faith in their man’s ability to end the war in Ukraine. Now it’s all over?
Photo: AFP

The US is shifting the financial burden of the proxy war onto Europe and projecting an image of disengagement — while remaining firmly in control of Ukraine's military operations, notes Thomas Fazi, an UnHerd columnist and translator.

Those who still held out hope that Donald Trump would resolve the Ukraine conflict through diplomacy have likely abandoned it in recent days.

After a brief pause in arms shipments to Kyiv — apparently due to dwindling US stockpiles — on July 7, Trump announced the resumption of military aid, justifying it with intensified Russian attacks and Ukraine’s urgent need for air defense systems.

The administration thus decided to draw $300 million worth of weapons from Pentagon stockpiles under the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) and send them to Kyiv.

It is the first time in his second term that Trump has used the PDA, a mechanism routinely employed by his predecessor, Joe Biden.

Trump and the hardliners

Although the American president has long been known for sudden U-turns and abrupt mood swings, his changed approach toward Moscow in the following days appeared to be something less improvised.

This shift in stance fits into the context of immense pressure from the media and political establishment to push the president back into the path charted by Biden — namely, providing Ukraine with abundant financial and military support.

Republican hawks and neoconservatives, who since Trump’s return to the White House have worked to marginalise the “isolationist” tendencies of the MAGA movement, are determined — riding the wave of the military strike on Iran, which they have heralded as a “success” — to reignite the confrontation with Russia.

The leaders of the UK, France, and Germany, as well as top EU officials, are likewise pressing for the continuation of the war. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared that the diplomatic tools to resolve the conflict in Ukraine have now been “exhausted”.

Until now, Trump had resisted such pressures. Convinced that Kyiv could not win, he had repeatedly labeled the conflict “Biden’s war” to distance himself from his predecessor and seek a US disengagement from Europe in order to refocus attention on the Pacific and China’s rise.

However, this recent shift in direction suggests that the war in Ukraine may soon become “Trump’s war”.

On July 14, during a meeting at the White House with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the American president unveiled an agreement with the Atlantic Alliance to send large quantities of weapons to Ukraine. He also threatened Moscow with severe secondary sanctions on its oil exports if it does not accept a negotiated settlement of the conflict within 50 days.

According to some US sources, the deal with NATO is worth an estimated $10 billion, though the timeframe remains unclear.

More appearance than substance

It is unclear, however, what weapons and ammunition will actually reach Kyiv’s hands, nor which European countries will genuinely take part in the scheme. Hungary has already declared that it has no intention of participating, and shortly after, France, Italy and the Czech Republic followed suit.

Moreover, after three years of war, neither the US nor European countries have large stockpiles of weapons and ammunition left to provide. They can only purchase arms still in production — but those will take time to reach the Ukrainian battlefield.

Neither the American nor the European arms industries can keep up with the demand coming from Ukraine and other war zones, and neither is capable of competing with Russia’s production capacity.

A textbook example of this is the American-made Patriot air defense batteries. There are currently 18 Patriot batteries in Europe, which cannot be sent to Kyiv without leaving the continent exposed.

Germany, which currently owns six of them, has confirmed plans to purchase two new batteries from the US to send to Ukraine — but this will take months.

According to a Guardian investigation, even the US has seen its reserves of Patriot missiles drop to critical levels, currently possessing only 25% of the interceptors required by the Pentagon’s military planning.

Lockheed Martin, which manufactures them, had announced plans to increase production from 500 to 600 units in 2025. However, according to some estimates, Russia produces around 750 ballistic missiles per year. Given that multiple interceptors are needed to take down a single missile, it becomes clear that US production is wholly insufficient.

The blunt weapon of sanctions

Similarly, there is reason to doubt that the threat of additional tariffs or sanctions will alter Russia’s strategic calculations.

Potential US tariffs on Russian exports would be negligible, as such exports total no more than $3 billion. As for possible secondary sanctions on Russian oil and other exports, these would primarily impact Moscow’s trade partners — such as China, India and Europe.

Russia would certainly feel the effects, but the costs would be borne by everyone — especially some of Washington’s own allies — due to the repercussions on global energy markets.

Moscow has also developed considerable skill in evading Western economic pressure, and the Russian economy has shown remarkable resilience in the face of such sanctions.

Confirming this, following Trump’s announcement of possible new sanctions, the Russian stock market rose by nearly 3%, suggesting that Russian investors are not particularly alarmed.

Why Washington cannot disengage

European countries are neither able to adequately replace US weapons systems, nor can they take over the American role in logistics and intelligence.

They lack both satellite surveillance capacity and the cargo planes and transport ships needed to move military matériel.

For all of these functions, Europe depends on the US — a dependency Washington has actively encouraged over the years, precisely to prevent the continent from developing greater strategic autonomy.

But this fact also makes it virtually impossible for the US to disengage from the European theatre (and especially the Ukrainian one) in the short to medium term — unless Washington is willing to give up the new “Iron Curtain” it has so meticulously constructed in Europe in recent years.

This is why the idea of allowing European countries to purchase American military equipment to transfer to Ukraine was introduced — an idea embraced by Trump from the earliest days of his presidency.

It is a system that allows the US to shift the financial burden of the war onto Europe while projecting an image of disengagement that is, in reality, merely superficial (and which does nothing to resolve the underlying issues of logistics and intelligence).

Following the strike on Iran, a bipartisan “war party” appears to be gaining momentum in Washington, one that increasingly believes that international issues can be resolved through the use of force.

Trump will inevitably have to contend with the isolationist wing of the movement that supports him.

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