Deals, Not Words
At the White House yesterday, the optics advertised unity, but the mechanics were unmistakably transactional: Trump the businessman is again selling weapons—European money, American kit, Ukrainian urgency—while signalling that the next stop is a trilateral format.
Three issues dominated: security guarantees for Ukraine, a possible „line-of-contact” arrangement, and planned trilateral meetings. Most leaders pressed for U.S. guarantees—an Article-5-like mechanism—reflecting Trump’s hints that America could enforce a peace without spelling out how. The offer on the table is blunt: Europe finances, Washington supplies, Kyiv co-produces—air defence, drones, precision munitions.
The guest list told its own story. The presence of several major states and institutions was extremely interesting, yet the Baltic States and Romania were completely omitted. Poland deliberately sent no one. The centre of the West turned up; the Eastern Flank—closest to Russian pressure—was under-represented. For now, I see little impact from EU leaders who seemed to be there mostly to be seen; Europe must prove unity in actions, not words.
Inside the room, Macron and Merz pressed for a ceasefire before formal talks; Macron floated a four-party follow-on after the trilateral to anchor Europe in the process. Von der Leyen raised abducted children; Meloni stressed transatlantic cohesion; Stubb argued—drawing on Finnish experience—that an end to war with Russia can be negotiated. Late in the closed session Trump phoned Putin for roughly forty minutes and later pushed for a Putin–Zelensky meeting this month, with the trilateral to follow. Early readouts say Kyiv rejected any land-for-peace idea, insists on a ceasefire as a precondition, and is ready to purchase about $100B in U.S. arms (largely with European funding) plus roughly $50B in U.S.–Ukrainian drone co-production.
What follows will be narrower rooms and harder numbers. If there is movement, it will start within the West: rules for any peacekeeping presence, division of costs, schedules for delivery. The real leverage still sits with Trump and Putin; everyone else must earn relevance. Europe’s task is simple to state and hard to execute—ramp defence industry, layer air defence, keep training and maintenance pipelines running. Unity is not a communiqué; it is output, cadence, and delivery.
