In the month since the disastrous summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, three things have become abundantly clear. Far from wanting peace, Putin is escalating his war on Ukraine. Trump has switched sides. And a blinkered Europe has stubbornly refused to address this reality.
On the night of September 9th-10th, Russia fired at least 19 drones into Polish airspace. This was the most blatant example yet of Russia’s attempts to provoke and test the response of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
As usual the allies huffed and puffed and vowed to protect every centimetre of Nato territory. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy noted ruefully that despite the declarations of outrage, no concrete measures were taken.
The drone attack on Poland revived calls for a Nato-enforced no-fly zone, which Ukraine has pleaded for since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Refusing to “close the skies” over Ukraine out of fear of escalation was Nato’s original sin. Now would be a good time to correct it.
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Putin uses threats of a third World War to blackmail the West. The Russian dictator wants Europeans to believe that supporting freedom and democracy in Ukraine is too risky. Blackmailers always come back for more.
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Trump did not respond to the Russian bombing of a US-owned appliance factory in western Ukraine on August 21st. A barrage of missiles and drones on August 28th killed 25 civilians in Kyiv and damaged the offices of the European Union and the British Council. The EU and Britain did nothing.
A week ago Russia launched more than 800 drones and 12 missiles at Ukraine in one night, a record. For the first time Russia targeted Ukraine’s seat of government. On September 9th Russia bombed pensioners queuing for monthly cash payments in the village of Yarova, near Slovyansk, killing 23 people. “A response is needed from the United States,” Zelenskiy wrote plaintively. “A response is needed from Europe ... Strong actions are needed to make Russia stop bringing death.”
The West did nothing. Russia staged the drone attack on Poland that same night. Polish prime minister Donald Tusk has closed Poland’s border with Belarus for the duration of the September 12th-16th Zapad (“West”) 2025 military manoeuvres between Russia and Belarus.
Tusk said the war games would simulate a Russian take-over of the Suwalki gap, the 65km border stretch between Poland and Lithuania that constitutes Nato’s only land bridge to the Baltic states. The Russian exclave of Kaliningrad lies at the western end of the corridor, Belarus to the east. The previous Zapad manoeuvres in late 2021 provided cover for the Russian military build-up that preceded the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Trump’s claims that Putin wanted peace were patently false. “In the course of the coming year, Ukraine may simply and purely cease to exist,” Nikolai Patrushev, the former FSB director and a close associate of Putin, predicted last January. Anton Kobyakov, another Putin adviser, said in May that the Soviet Union still legally exists. The same message was signalled by Putin’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, when he wore a USSR sweatshirt to the Anchorage summit. Russia had an empire. Putin wants it back.
In St Petersburg in June, Putin said, “I consider the Russian and Ukrainian peoples to be one people. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours ... We have an old rule: wherever a Russian soldier sets foot is ours.”
Trump’s response to the violation of the airspace of a Nato ally was a limp post on social media: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones?” Trump asked. “Here we go!”
Under Trump, the US has switched sides. Trump’s administration has forbidden Ukraine from joining Nato, paused weapons transfers and intelligence cooperation with Ukraine, suspended counter-intelligence against Russia, disabled US agencies which offered an alternative to Russian propaganda and stopped security assistance for Baltic states threatened by Russia. Trump and special envoy Steve Witkoff parrot Russian talking points about Ukraine. This summer, Trump’s henchmen in ICE deported about 80 opponents to Putin back to Russia, where they could face prison and possibly death.
In Anchorage, Trump abandoned threats of sanctions against Russia, in exchange for nothing. He handed Putin a victory by adopting the Russian president’s position that no ceasefire was needed before a final peace agreement in Ukraine.
Europeans cherish naive hopes that Trump will protect them, but Putin has convinced the White House that Europe is the chief obstacle to peace
Europeans have escalated their rhetoric. German chancellor Friedrich Merz recently called Putin “perhaps the most serious war criminal of our time”. French president Emmanuel Macron called him “an ogre at our door” and a “predator’ who “does not want peace”.
The EU plans to invest €150 billion in its defence industry and talks about using €200 billion in frozen Russian assets to transform Ukraine into a “steel porcupine”. Such moves would be taken more seriously if Europe ceased all purchases of Russian gas and petroleum now rather than in three to five years as projected.
In the face of Russian irredentism and Trump’s complicity with Putin, Europe should have gone full throttle on a defence system independent of the US. By forcing Europeans to purchase US weapons for transfer to Ukraine, Trump has debilitated European efforts to develop their own industry.
Europeans cherish naive hopes that Trump will protect them. On the contrary, Putin has convinced the White House that Europe is the chief obstacle to peace.
Twenty-six members of the “coalition of the willing” have declared readiness to deploy troops to secure a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, Macron said on September 4th. But as Zelenskiy notes, western troops are needed now, not after an illusory agreement. Putin again played on western fears of escalation, saying that foreign troops deployed to Ukraine would be considered “legitimate targets”.
Leading members of the coalition, including Germany and Poland, made their participation in a theoretical “reassurance force” contingent on a US “backstop”. At the conclusion of the September 4th meeting, members of the coalition spent two hours on the telephone with Trump in the hope that he would elaborate on an earlier promise to participate in “security guarantees”. In vain.
