It was an unprecedented scene.
Last Friday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to the US to sign the rare minerals deal after several weeks of hard work on the original draft deemed unacceptable by Kyiv.
Two visits preceded his. French President Emmanuel Macron traveled to Washington D.C. in a bid to woo Trump, which worked out well, and U.K. PM Keir Starmer, who also came to the White House with a visit that turned out, against some expectations, to be even more prolific, with the British media labeling it as a success.
However, the public debacle between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vice-President J.D. Vance and Trump, which took place toward the end of the press conference, strained these efforts. The conversation about security guarantees and futile diplomacy with Putin got so heated that the Trump administration effectively asked to leave the entire Ukrainian delegation. Zelenskyy’s interview with the Fox News later did little to ameliorate the situation, and he left for the U.K. to meet Starmer.
Enter the European leaders.
Almost immediately after the spat, Polish PM Donald Tusk, alongside other European PMs and Presidents, rushed to Zelenskyy’s defense, pledging their support for Ukraine and reminding the world that Russia is the aggressor.
But notably not the U.K. PM Keir Starmer and there’s likely an explanation for that.
The purpose of his or Macron’s visit to the UK wasn’t to challenge Trump’s ambition to strike a peace deal, which, according to his own admission and that of his senior Cabinet members, might not work out, but to seek a backstop for the potential deployment of French and U.K. peacekeepers in Ukraine.
Macron did not receive many pledges from Trump, but Starmer, whose negotiation style is strikingly different compared to the French leader though no less effective, managed to get a more concrete response from the US President, who said that if the UK needs its “help” in the event of a Russian renewed attack, he’d “always be with the British.”
This was a satisfactory answer, especially given that the negotiations barely started, while also managing to get the green light to the Chagos Isalnds deal, exemptions from US tariffs, and begin working on a trade deal.
Starmer’s dilemma
It is thus unsurprising that Starmer kept silent in the immediate aftermath of the Oval Office spat as the British leader was put in a difficult position.
It is no secret that, for better or worse, the UK considers its relations with the US to be exceptional, bound by common history and legacy. For London, these ties matter, and they were accordingly brought up during the meeting in Washington, D.C., in a positive light by the Americans. This is despite the recent criticism from Vance and the White House’s spiritual leader Elon Musk attacks on the U.K. and Starmer personally.
Yet, he’s also overtly and genuinely supportive of Ukraine, ready to put the boots on the ground and planes in the air, an announcement that he made during his visit to the Oval Office, and which Trump supported. The debacle was hardly part of the UK’s thaw plan with Trump, nonetheless a reaction of some kind was bound to ensue so Starmer agreed to provide Ukraine with a loan worth 2.26 billion pounds ($2.84 billion) backed by frozen Russian assets, made air defence pledges, and chaired the summit in London where, in stark contrast to Washington D.C., Zelenskyy’s informal attire was not questioned.
The outcome of that summit, however, confirmed the multiple statements and theories made before it: despite all the talk and criticism, Europe doesn’t have an alternative vision of how to end the full-scale Russo-Ukraine war. Or as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio put it in his Sunday interview with ABC News: “I’ve asked every foreign minister I meet with, ‘Tell me your idea of how this turns out.’ Most don’t have a plan”.
Though he added that in his other interview with CNN that one European foreign minister, the name of which he did not wish to disclose, suggested that Ukraine fight for another year so that Russia could beg it to come to the negotiation table. It was never fully clarified why it would beg to go to the negotiation table.
This is not what the US administration seeks or wants as it doesn’t consider Europe to be the primary security focus, a circumstance that long foreshadows both Trump’s administrations and dates to as early as the beginning of the 1990s, and wants to focus on the Pacific region.
It likewise doesn’t believe that Ukraine can defeat Russia as it would objectively require not just a lot of money but also time and equipment. The Republicans, a great chunk of which are obsessed with the notion of the US going bankrupt, do not wish to fund what they refer to as “endless wars.” Nor do they see the Russo-Ukraine war as a replica of WWII, so for them, any Munich agreement comparison is largely irrelevant though most admit that Putin has an expansionist agenda, which is why, according to their logic, he must be stopped in Ukraine and re-oriented toward weakening China.
At the same time, there’s a good reason to believe that they want this peace to be lasting for their own egoistic reasons. Trump doesn’t wish for the war to resume on his watch, while J.D. Vance is eyeing the presidential election in 2028. The rare minerals deal plays a role in this not simply because of the financial gains it provides and American vested economic interest in the region but also because the exploration and extraction of these minerals will take considerable time. It’d not be in the American interest for the war to resume.
The Crown saves the day?
The grand question now is whether US-Ukraine relations can be repaired as it becomes evident that Europe can offer nothing but its own version of a peace deal that likewise features a partial ceasefire, on which Britain and France cannot agree, and deployment of peacekeepers.
So far, the signals aren’t encouraging. On the one hand, Trump remains allegedly open to cooperation with Zelenskyy as long as he pursues peace that is aligned with his vision.
On the other, it appears that the frustration with Ukraine’s President is stronger – much surprising given the long-standing testy relations between Trump and Zelenskyy – among Trump’s aides who want to discontinue all types of cooperation with his administration.
For Ukraine, this spells true doom as the US is the main source of weapons and, most importantly, intel for the Ukrainian army that helps it counter the Russian army, which, despite slow advances, continues to capture Ukraine’s sovereign land. Should the US indeed suspend all aid, Europe would not be able immediately replace it even with large aid packages.
Fixing or de-escalating this situation would likely require a mediator. And Starmer is, arguably, the best man to make this happen.
He, alongside NATO’s chief Mark Rutte, was among the first to call on Zelenskyy to repair his relations with Trump following the debacle, making it clear that without the US, nothing would really happen.
Likewise, he rejected the idea of canceling President Trump’s invitation to a state visit to the United Kingdom and knows that the best way to appease Trump, whom the Telegraph coined as “the world’s most unpredictable utterly predictable man”, is by making him feel special. This was the reason why he brought a letter from King Charles III to the Oval Office that personally addressed Trump, coupled with an enormous signature.
It was a Christmas unboxing-like scene, with a child finally getting the so yearned for puppy. Still, this type of appeasement worked, and may be one of the only paths for Europe and Ukraine forward to mend the shaky transatlantic relations that nonetheless appear to have no substitute regardless of bloviate-like talk.
