The evolution of the first depends on Ukrainian resistance in this war of attrition, thus on the capacity of the Ukrainian people to hold out without giving in to exhaustion and demoralisation. But it is the second that will largely determine the outcome of the war, that is to say, these leaders for whom human suffering and commitment count for little.

If solidarity with the Ukrainian people obliges us to take an interest in the circus of international meetings, in the bargaining and negotiations between two imperialisms, to dismantle their mechanisms and observe their effects, this must be done with consciousness of how scandalous this arrogant contempt is towards the reality experienced by Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.

The emergence of a new factor, the illusionist and erratic Trump

If Trump’s presidency brings about a major rupture in the balance of power, it is because political and military support from the United States to Ukraine, notoriously insufficient but nevertheless decisive, is called into question and has become precarious. Trump can neutralise it at any moment. Worse: he threatens a reversal of alliances taking Ukraine and Europe from behind. Towards Putin he displays complicity and real indulgence.

Despite his bluster, we see a permeability to the Putinist narrative. Who is responsible for the war? Biden and Zelensky! Who must have their security guaranteed? Russia, the territories it occupies or claims in Ukraine, on the fallacious pretext of protecting the ’Russian-speaking minorities’ of Ukraine! Who exercises power? Not Putin, but Zelensky!

Thus, for Trump, a peace agreement can appear within reach! Especially as it rests on certain fundamentals of American policy, which he applies with extraordinary brutality. On the one hand, the primacy of US interests over those of other countries, including allies, and over the principles of international law. On the other hand, the centrality of rivalry with China in the race for global power and the geostrategic pivot towards the Pacific. These two parameters lead him to scorn the importance of Ukraine, even of Europe, and thus to seek means of ridding himself of the Ukrainian question, perhaps with the hope of detaching Russia from China, even of setting it up as a partner for global reorganisations.

Putin, even weakened, maintains his bellicose and annexationist positions

Putin has managed to partially erase the patent failure of the so-called ’special military operation’ against Ukraine, which aimed through a lightning offensive to conquer Kyiv, bring down the Zelensky government and restore Russian domination over Ukraine. This offensive broke against Ukrainian resistance. But Putin’s obstinacy leads to a long, destructive war that has lasted for more than three years.

The Ukrainian people are paying a terrible price. But Russia too, in terms of human losses, economic decline, increasing degradation of democratic life and international discredit. Without Putin renouncing his bellicose policy.

This responds to an imperative with which the Putin regime identifies: restoring Russia’s imperial power over its former geopolitical space. Hence the bloody interventions conducted in Chechnya, those in Moldova, in Georgia, and since 2014 the aggression against Ukraine.

Crushing Ukraine’s sovereignty, its aspiration to democracy and its desire for rapprochement with the European Union represents the decisive test for the continuation of this policy.

Because he plays on non-negligible assets

° Reduce his objectives to the pursuit of territorial gains? It would be an error to believe this (an error aggravated for some who authorise themselves to judge this ’legitimate’). These territories represent so many points of support for imposing the political domination of the Kremlin over a Ukraine annihilated as a state and preparing other stages of its expansionism: we already saw what this meant in Georgia (occupation of Abkhazia, then South Ossetia), in Moldova (the de facto occupation of Transnistria), Crimea and part of Donbas occupied in 2014…

Due to the success of these acts of force, accepted on the international level in the name of compromises for peace, these territories have been consolidated as bases for subsequent offensives. The countries that were formerly integrated into the space of the former USSR or suffered its domination (first and foremost, the Baltic States, but also Poland and Finland), understand perfectly that a Russian victory against Ukraine would translate into new limitless appetites.

° The other error is to ignore the specific temporality of the Kremlin (in contrast with the frenzy imposed by Trump on world politics). Putin bets on the long term, estimating that the exhaustion of Ukrainian resistance, European divisions and fatigue, will only increase, whilst at present his regime is not really threatened by economic difficulties and popular anger. He can count on securing over time a balance favourable to him, due to the demographic inequality and military assets he possesses: a nuclear arsenal that intimidates Westerners, means in the domain of hybrid warfare and cyberspace…

With another asset, decisive this time, Trump.

The supposed summit that brought together Trump and Putin in Alaska [1] represented an incredible symbolic victory for the latter and a rebuff for the former. The staging had the value of international rehabilitation for Putin, who, from war criminal (ICC arrest warrant of 17 March 2023) was transfigured into co-leader of the world order. As for Trump, he shelved the demand for a ceasefire that he boasted he would impose, in favour of the ’peace agreement’ – proposed by Putin. The latter knows perfectly well that this implies a long time during which he will have his hands free to pursue his devastating attacks in Ukraine. And would impose catastrophic conditions for Ukraine (and which one can suspect Trump of having accepted ’in private’): abandonment of the territories occupied by Russia and beyond (all of Donbas, the unoccupied parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, and thus the loss of the lines of fortifications protecting the rest of Ukraine), a neutralised Ukraine renouncing all rapprochement with the European Union and NATO, [2] the eviction of Zelensky (a demand relayed by some in Europe!) who, whatever criticisms we legitimately formulate regarding a dominant liberalism, embodies Ukrainian resistance!

In short, for Ukraine, capitulation. And, for the ’Europeans’, renunciation of assuming their international responsibilities. After accepting their impotence in the Middle East, which leaves the Netanyahu government conducting its genocidal offensive in Gaza, and the acceleration of West Bank colonisation, annihilating the prospect of ’two states’ and all hope of peace, the very future of Europe would escape them.

The alternative is not to yield on the right to self-determination of the Ukrainian people and their national sovereignty. Thus to assume the requirement of a European defence, a formidable question for the left and ecologists from which it is impossible to escape. A question on which it will be necessary to begin, or continue, in-depth reflection.

The ’Europeans’ facing a ’diktat’

With delay, reluctance and divisions, the ’Europeans’ – members of the European Union (with the exception of Hungary and Slovakia), and the United Kingdom –, with the support of important non-European countries (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, even Japan…) agree on the vital nature of support for Ukraine in the face of Putin’s Russia’s aggression… This implies commitments of political, economic and military aid.

But the problem they face is that this military aid is closely dependent on American military power and US weapons. Hence the obligation, excessively constraining, to ’make do with Trump’!

Given the fundamental agreements between Putin and Trump, and the particular ’personality’ of the latter, the ’Europeans’ find themselves conducting with Trump a diplomacy of pressure, which they must both handle carefully and push firmly in the right direction…

The ’spectacle’ proves as permanent as it is staggering.

The urgency was to correct the ’Anchorage effect’ and compensate for the relative success banked by Putin. The Washington ’counter-summit’ partly answered this concern.

Trump had to accept receiving (courteously, this time!) Zelensky, accompanied (and in fact protected) by an array of seven high-ranking officials (representing five European states, plus the EU and NATO), to conduct in full view of the world a discussion of apparently open character.

At the price of shameless flattery towards Trump, this diplomatic pack managed to limit this conversation with high stakes: discretion on the explosive question of territories liable to be conceded to Russia, to emphasise the security guarantees that must be given to Ukraine in prospect of a peace agreement (which presuppose US involvement), an agreement supported by the prospect of a tripartite summit (with Zelensky), even quadripartite (with the Europeans)… The urgent necessity of a ceasefire, decisive, was recalled without being able to be imposed.

The only tangible result is that Trump showed himself proud of having convinced Putin of the interest of a meeting including Zelensky, which could confirm Putin’s ill will. Not to mention that all this remains subject to Trump’s habitual about-faces!

How can one not denounce this diplomatic phantasmagoria on which depends the fate of the Ukrainian people, and beyond the future of what remains of international law and democracy?

And also not observe that European governments deploy treasures of flattery to have their say on the future of the continent?

It remains that one is constrained to take an interest in it to strive to weigh upon reality…

This in solidarity, an internationalist solidarity still as indispensable, with the Ukrainian people!

28 August 2025

John Barzman, Stefan Bekier, Jean-Paul Bruckert, Armand Creus, Bernard Dreano, Hugues Joscaud, Didier Martin, Roland Mérieux, Henri Mermé, Robi Morder, Vincent Présumey, Mariana Sanchez, Henri Saint-Jean, Francis Sitel