Russia gets a small victory, Ukraine gets a slight relief, but is still furiously out of the room and Europe suddenly be relevant again.
The conversations between the US and Russia, which have just been completed in Riyadh, gave Moscow generally the greatest reasons for satisfaction. For a long time, Moscow portrayed (incorrectly) the war in Ukraine as an attack from Nato to Russia, and this bilateral meeting helps to perpetuate this false idea.
Moscow is also achieving real and practical results. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that their American and Russian embassies would again have a more functional level of personnel after the significant expulsions that began when Russia used a nervous agent of purity equivalent to a weapon in British soil against the ancient Russian spy Sergei Skripal. It is Russia coming from the cold, perhaps with a very functional logic behind it. But the rehabilitation that began with liberation from the Kremlin of American teacher Marc Fogel now continues with diplomatic norms to be partially restored.
Russia did not grant, nor won – it is not clear to who would be the final benefit now – a face to face between presidents Trump and Putin. This summit has been the Pillar of Trump’s policy for peace in Ukraine. But at this time of Russian rehabilitation, it may seem an act of normalization more favorable to Moscow’s immediate interests. It won’t happen anytime soon.
This slowdown will be a reason for a small dose of joy in Kiev. The Riyadh meeting did not end with the White House – committed to an approach to Moscow – to promise that Ukraine would make unpleasant concessions to quickly get a bad deal. The whole issue of peace in Ukraine should be given to other negotiation teams, which may delay any results. National Security Counselor Mike Waltz weighed in his empty hands the balance of “territorial concessions” and “security guarantees” that both sides would have to accept as reality. (The first is something Kiev will have to give and the second is probably something Moscow will have to accept).
Zelensky’s immediate response was to cancel his previously planned trip to Riade for this Wednesday, where he might expect to catch the bowels of the US-Russian summit. Instead, he protested against Ukraine agreements made without Ukraine, said he only learned of the Summit USA-Russia through the media and said, “I don’t care if our partners think something unnecessary about us.” He is angry, but because of the current approach between the US and Russia, not because something horribly has come out of the summit.
On the other hand, the last week of geopolitical turbulence found a moment of calm, when the trio of US responsible, sitting on a Saudi flag (with the US envoy to the Middle East, Steven Witkoff, on the left), He accepted that Europe would be vital to the future. Waltz insisted that the narrative that Europe and Ukraine were being left out of peace talks was false, although Zelensky, moments later, disagreed.
However, days earlier, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine and Russia, General Keith Kellogg, said in Munich that Europeans would not get involved in peace talks about Ukraine due to diplomatic efforts failed during the first seat of the conflict in 2015. Europe panicked and began to make its own plans. However, 72 hours later, the Trump administration wants them to know that they have never ceased to be important. It is expected that the risks will increase when UK Prime Minister Keir Stmerer meet Trump next week in Washington.
The lack of a quick deal, the furor and anxiety of last week are ultimately Putin’s interest. During this time, Europe listened to the US Defense Secretary to say that the US is no longer the guarantee of security in Europe, the US Vice President to say falsely that the main allies of Washington DC in Europe were totalitarian for fear of his Voters themselves and Trump’s envoy to the largest war in Europe since the 1940s claim that Europe itself would not be part of any peace agreement. (This is although they probably need their troops for a peacekeeping mission expected to be at the center of any agreement.)
United States permanent allies in Europe have been striving to absorb the unthinkable: European soil defense against a nuclear weapon Russia without the threat of American force to repel Moscow’s aggression. It may seem strange that Europe has never thought that it needed to defend itself since the end of the Cold War. But its alliance with NATO is based on mutual benefits: it has been behind the sending of British troops to Iraq and Polacas to Afghanistan, just as it is at the center of the defense of European territory. Hegseth’s brief statement in Brussels destroyed the concept of the NATO. As much as the Trump administration tries to mend it again, the fire lit last week in Brussels is both that in Europe that it is hurrying to defend itself as the Russian opportunity.
The broader deal between Washington DC and Moscow is also likely to play more in favor of this latter. It satisfies the fictional narrative of the Russians that they are in a war unpaid against the whole born. It gives them a peer status with the US, after the alleged war crimes and isolation since the 2022 invasion. It means that Ukraine becomes part of a larger business rather than being the whole game. And ultimately ends with Russia’s rehabilitation in the global order – and thus economic growth, diplomatic respectability and forgiveness – perhaps with limited costs or Moscow concessions.
However, the biggest problem of a slowly forged peace agreement is the front line itself.
Russia is winning. Their advances have been agonizingly slow and expensive, but they continue to happen. For now, time is on Putin’s side. And the longer there is dismay, recalibration and anxiety among Ukraine allies, the fragile they become the morals and sovereignty of Ukraine.
