This is Putin and Trump’s world now

Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine. Since the invasion, that has been an American mantra – the promise not to indulge in Russia’s game of carving up third countries between the two superpowers.

Not any more.

In what US President Donald Trump called a “highly productive” phone call, he and Vladimir Putin “agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately”.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin held a 90-minute phone call, their first as leaders since the Ukraine war started.Credit: Nine

If that is what happened, it is a great victory for Putin’s world view.

The Russian president has always believed that only those countries that decide the fate of others can be truly sovereign.

He has always been determined that Russia would be one of the great powers – along with the United States and China – qualified to carve up the rest of the world between them.

That is why he always wanted to talk to Washington, not Kyiv, about the fate of Ukraine. Anything else would be a humiliation.

Yet a victory for Putin’s ego is not the same as a victory in the war. At least, it does not have to be.

Trump’s Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, drew the outline of the US president’s vision of peace in blunt terms during a meeting with NATO defence ministers on Thursday AEDT.

Occupied territory would not be given back to Ukraine, he said – implying a freeze along the current line of contact. Ukraine would receive neither NATO membership nor an Article 5 security guarantee – part of the military alliance’s treaty that requires allies to aid any member under attack. And absolutely no US troops would be involved in the peacekeeping force.

That’s a grim deal that will reward Russia with stolen land and leave Ukraine vulnerable to a second attack in years to come.

But Hegseth also called for security guarantees sufficient to deter another Russian attack, acknowledging it cannot be “Minsk 3.0” – a reference to two previous peace deals that Russia used to regroup before attacking again.

If that promise is kept; if Ukraine holds on to the cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Kherson and Dnipro; above all, if it remains free and becomes prosperous; then the Ukrainian people can be said to have won.

Yes, at horrific cost and with an imperfect peace – but nonetheless, they will have won, and they will have a future.

Britain and the other allies who have stood with Ukraine since the invasion began will also be able to claim a part of that victory.

But there is a catch. As Trump has made clear, and Hegseth spelt out in language even a child could understand, America is not interested in underwriting either Ukrainian or European security.

So the shape of the peace will depend on Europe – and that includes Britain.

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and his peers across the Channel must decide whether they want to choose the fate of their continent, or allow Moscow and Washington to do it for them.

It means massive investment in their armed forces and defence industries to deter a future Russian attack, not only on Ukraine, but on European NATO itself.

It will mean hard trade-offs and politically difficult spending decisions. But it is doable.

Ukraine has the largest, most battle-hardened and capable army in Europe.

If Britain and other allies live up to their word, they could mount a credible defence of the Continent from the Black Sea to the Barents and from Kharkiv to County Kerry (Ireland’s neutrality will also depend on that European deterrent working in the event of American retreat).

The alternative probably looks like this: Putin would return to Ukraine in a few years, and take Kharkiv and Kyiv. He would then invade a NATO country, reassured that the alliance would not live up to its rhetoric of collective defence.

He would be quite likely to be proven correct.

Britain and Europe would then live in what Russian diplomats like to call “a new European security architecture”.

It would be a place where Putin’s view of the strong carving up the weak would hold sway.

There is no excuse for surprise here.

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (left, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky) and his peers across the Channel must decide whether they want to choose the fate of their continent, or allow Moscow and Washington to do it for them.Credit: Getty Images

Trump’s rhetoric has been consistent. The shift of American focus to the Pacific began under Barack Obama. American impatience with European freeloading predates even him.

American annoyance is now compounded by a thaw between Washington and Moscow. Trump said he and Putin had agreed to visit each other’s countries.

The cordon sanitaire Western countries threw around Moscow in a bid to isolate the Russian president is gaping open.

Outward unity was, until now, one of NATO’s greatest strengths. Less than an hour before Hegseth’s address to the Ukraine Defence Contact Group – more than 50 allies co-ordinating aid to Kyiv – Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary-general, offered a public warning about negotiating with Putin.

“We can easily brainstorm about the best way forward … but let’s not make him wiser than he is already,” Rutte told a news conference.

Some in NATO will welcome the admissions made by Hegseth on Ukraine, however.

German diplomats have long expressed scepticism about Ukraine taking back all of its land, not to mention the wisdom of NATO membership.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has not been taken by surprise. He remarked the day before that he feared being cut out of American and Russian deliberations.

The war is not over yet. Zelensky is a capable and highly motivated statesman who will use every opportunity to win the best deal for Ukraine that he can.

There is still much to play for, and the grim, inevitable rules of war mean that the fighting at the front will only intensify as a ceasefire looms closer.

Meanwhile, Britain and Europe must ask whether they too want to be at the table – or on the menu.

It is decision time.

Telegraph, London

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