In a ten-minute temper tantrum at the end of their 50 minutes of press conference, Presidents Trump and Zelensky and Vice President JD Vance seemed to be voting for yet more instability across Europe and the world.
From the Trump team it seemed hardly an exercise in elegant dialogue and diplomacy. President Zelensky’s pique courted disaster.
The exchange in the White House was so theatrical that one might be tempted to think the triggered outburst first of Vance and then Trump were orchestrated – rehearsed, even.
The falling out between Ukraine’s president and his country’s principal backer in the three year war has been a huge bonus to Vladimir Putin, who so far has said nothing of consequence. The question for him now is whether Donald Trump can force Ukraine to accept Moscow’s terms for ceasefire that would score Russia a vital propaganda victory.
To describe Russia as the outright winner in this latest spat might be a little short-sighted. The long view should be that the main advantage goes to Beijing and Xi Jinping. To borrow Donald Trump’s favoured phrase at the end of the White House verbal battle, Xi holds the cards that count.
As Ukraine cannot continue another year of war without Washington, Russia needs all the Chinese assistance it can get – especially over the next few months.
While the leadership of Europe’s allies try to pick up the pieces from the breaking of the diplomatic crockery in Pennsylvania Avenue, the war goes on across Ukraine at its miserable, bloody pace. Casualties are high, and recruiting and training are a difficult for both armies – though in a different way.
In Ukraine the shortage of infantry shows signs of becoming chronic. The average age in the front line is 43, which is high. The age for recruiting and military service has dropped from 25 to 23 and is now heading to 18.
At the outset of the war, over one thousand days ago, the Ukraine government had targeted older men for the army in order to preserve a critical vibrant population of young men and women in their twenties and thirties to maintain the sinews of society and the economy. Smart graduates were, and are, needed for colleges and universities, and to maintain an increasingly battered infrastructure. Now they have to be called to the colours.
This level of attrition on the battlefield will become unsustainable by the end of the summer
Moreover the way the war is fought on the front lines takes its toll. The new tools of AI and drones of all calibre have been copious, but on the thousand kilometer line of contact the face of battle is grime and old fashioned. Many tactical drones are hampered by weather, and cannot be flown three days out of seven in some weeks. Tactics and schemes of manoeuvre are from the old Soviet military doctrine. “There’s an awful lot of infantry just charging across open fields,” muses a western observer with direct experience of the Ukraine front.
Russia seems to have an almost limitless supply of recruits. Putin has raised an army of nearly a million to a million and a half across his vast country – and without declaring a general mobilisation. But increasingly soldiers in their 60s and even 70s have been signed up with a bounty of around two million roubles – roughly $23,000 USD. The average age in the ranks is about 40.
Even with the new bounties and incentives, it will be hard to sustain the present rate of casualties. Definitive numbers are hard to come by, but if losses are anywhere near the 43,000 a month projected by British officials, this level of attrition will become unsustainable by the end of the summer.
The immediate questions are for Nato’s European allies. They have to work out how to keep the Trump presidency on board for a concerted peace effort for Ukraine. The future of the alliance is at stake. In its present incarnation, it cannot work without American input, firepower, brain power and money. The European allies now have to work out how they can operate on their own – which is what Trump will require them to do if there is to be any form of peace mission this year or next.
Will Washington now fight a new path to peace – not only through minerals and strategic natural materials in Ukraine, but across Russia and the Arctic, as well? Certainly Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister, has hinted at it, and brought his top investment team led by Kirill Dimitriev, investment chief, and Vladimir Proskuryakov, his Arctic specialist, to the talks with Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff in Riyadh last month.
This weekend Sir Keir Starmer will try to patch things up with Zelensky and the Europeans, and by phone with Trump. Unfortunately, as a Whitehall wag put it, if you stand in the middle of the road too long, you can get run over.
Robert Fox is defence editor
