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The 11 days of whiplash-inducing talks British and French officials endured to repair shattered relations between Washington and Kyiv, and for the first time put Donald Trump’s trust in Vladimir Putin to the test, could go down as one of the great feats of diplomatic escapology.
The dogged fence-mending may yet unravel as hurdles remain, principally the outstanding question of Ukraine’s security guarantees, but for the first time, in the words of Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, the ball is in Russia’s court. Putin, by instinct cautious, has preferred watching from the sidelines, suppressing his delight as Trump denounced Volodymyr Zelenskyy to his face in the White House and wreaked subsequent vengeance by stopping all military aid and then pulling some US intelligence.
One European diplomat said: “Ever since the Oval Office catastrophe, the aim has been to put Putin in the spotlight, and to make Trump realise Putin is not his ally, but instead is who we say he is.”
The diplomat admitted the manoeuvre had been difficult to pull off with emotions running so high, not just in Kyiv, but in the capitals of Europe where many regarded the Oval Office confrontation of 28 February as a well-planned plot to humiliate Zelenskyy and then cut him loose, and not a meeting that inadvertently spiralled out of control in front of the world’s media. Figures as senior as the German chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, accused Trump of “a manufactured escalation”.
The differing interpretations of the meeting’s spectacular breakdown in part reflected wider instinctive divisions in Europe about whether the whole transatlantic alliance was salvageable, or could be jettisoned in the midst of this crisis.
Those that argued that the Kyiv-Washington relationship had to be repaired, even at the cost of concessions by Ukraine, in essence agreed with Trump’s warning to Zelenskyy when he said: “You are not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us you start to have cards. You are gambling with the lives of millions of people.”
Recognition of that fact started at the Lancaster House summit on 2 March, originally called by Starmer and Emmanuel Macron to report back to a small group of countries on their respective visits to Washington. But it morphed into a crisis strategy meeting to which every self-respecting European leader demanded an invitation.
While in public Starmer embraced Zelenskyy on the steps of Downing Street, and King Charles posed for pictures with the Ukrainian leader, the heavy lifting was already under way privately to persuade him that relations had to be repaired, and gratitude to the US shown.
One reason was purely pragmatic. The big European military powers – Germany, France, UK and Poland – all thought a European reassurance force inside Ukraine would be a highly perilous operation, and probably impossible, without an American backstop.
At the summit it was agreed that the deal the US was seeking to acquire Ukraine’s valuable mineral wealth – regarded as a necessary bauble for Trump – was not the true source of the breakdown in relations, it was the president’s broader demand that Zelenskyy show he is serious about peace.
At Lancaster House, Macron proposed that Zelenskyy take the diplomatic initiative by offering a one-month ceasefire, a plan the French leader had outlined on the way to London in interviews with Le Figaro. In gestation for some time, it had been squared with London.
Macron said the ceasefire would not cover ground forces fighting along the frontline in the east. “In the event of a ceasefire, it would be very difficult to verify [a truce] along the front was being respected”, he said.
In a separate interview, the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, for the first time laid out the strategic thinking: “Such a truce on air, sea and energy infrastructure would allow us to determine whether Vladimir Putin is acting in good faith when he commits to a truce. And that’s when real peace negotiations could start.”
The ball was indeed to be placed in Moscow’s court.
Britain’s ambassador in Washington, Peter Mandelson, lent his weight to the proposal in an interview with ABC News when he called for an unfolding plan that would require a radical reset. He said: “After what happened [in the Oval Office] it is clear we need to bring the US and Ukraine back together again. The first thing Zelenskyy needs to do is give his unequivocal backing to the initiative President Trump is taking to end the war and bring a just and lasting peace to Ukraine, and the Europeans too need to back the call for a ceasefire.”
Critically he said “Ukraine should be first to commit to a ceasefire and defy the Russians to follow” and that this “was the only show in town”.
But fury towards Kyiv remained rife in Washington, with Republicans demanding Zelenskyy appear on US TV to apologise to Trump. The national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said of the Oval Office showdown: “This was the wrong approach, wrong time in history, and definitely the wrong president to try to do this. What we need to hear from President Zelenskyy is that he regrets what happened, that he’s ready to sign this minerals deal, and that he’s ready to engage in peace talks.”
On 4 March, Trump suspended military aid to Ukraine, and by the following day had halted the sharing of US offensive intelligence, prompting European outrage. Through the week, as much of the EU focused on ways to evade fiscal debt rules to boost European defence spending, messages were sent to Washington that Ukraine would collapse if Trump’s decision was not reversed.
The British chief of the defence staff, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, was one of the many persuasive voices to travel to Washington to argue Ukraine could not simply be abandoned. The European lobbying about the impact of the withdrawal of aid began to have some effect in that for the first time Trump started talking about potential consequences for Russia if it did not cooperate. Zelenskyy’s chief of staff was also assuring Washington that Kyiv wanted a deal.
By 6 March, the US was briefing that Zelenskyy would meet US officials in Saudi Arabia to agree to a ceasefire, a clear sign that Washington had been convinced the Ukrainian leader had learned his lesson.
Trump was still blowing hot and cold on Sunday, telling Fox News that Zelenskyy “is a smart guy, and he’s a tough guy. And he took money out of this country, under Biden, like candy from a baby. It was so easy. With that same attitude. And I just don’t think he’s grateful.”
At the weekend Starmer spoke again with Macron and the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, about the need to resume intelligence-sharing with Kyiv. Starmer remained convinced that the withdrawal of aid and intelligence sharing, while hugely damaging and potentially fatal to Ukraine’s cause, was a Trump negotiating tactic to get Zelenskyy to agree to a ceasefire, and not part of a sinister conspiracy to help Russia take Ukraine.
Starmer’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, also tested this proposition in a conversation with Waltz, his US counterpart. The key meeting last weekend was when Powell travelled to Kyiv to discuss the handling of talks in Jeddah being hosted by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman; it was in the Ukrainian capital that details of a broader ceasefire covering land forces, the role of Europe in talks, and confidence-building measures were discussed.
Powell, steeped in mediation with non-state actors throughout his political career, primarily with the IRA in Northern Ireland, is ideally placed to understand the art of negotiation. It appears he pressed Ukraine into accepting a ceasefire without clear security guarantees, arguing the issue could be addressed if and when the talks started.
In a sense, Britain and France are putting Trump’s judgment and tactics to the test. The US president says all his soft-pedalling around Moscow has been to draw Putin to the negotiating table. In the Oval Office, he said: “You want me to say really terrible things about Putin and then say: ‘Hi, Vladimir. How are we doing on the deal?’ That doesn’t work that way. I’m not aligned with Putin. I’m not aligned with anybody. I’m aligned with the United States of America, and for the good of the world, I’m aligned with the world, and I want to get this thing over with. You see, the hatred he’s [Zelenskyy] got for Putin, it’s very tough for me to make a deal with that kind of hate. He’s got tremendous hatred, and I understand that, but I can tell you the other side is not exactly in love with him either. So it’s not a question of alignment.”
But he also spelled out his trust in Putin, in an assessment of the man’s character that few in western Europe agree with: “All I can say is this: he might have broken deals with Obama and Bush, and he might have broken them with Biden … but he didn‘t break them with me,” Trump said, adding: “He wants to make a deal.”
Now the world is going to find out if the American president has assessed Putin and Russia’s intentions correctly.
