Vladimir Putin has lost no time in warning that he’d attack foreign troops stationed in Ukraine as part of a peace deal he has no intention of signing while Donald Trump continues to undermine Europe’s defences.
Speaking in Vladivostok, Putin – who claims that Ukraine’s intention to join Nato is the reason his forces invaded – said: “If some troops appear there, especially now, during military operations, we proceed from the fact that these will be legitimate targets for destruction.”
His words came less than 24 hours after French president Emmanuel Macron announced that there are now 26 countries in the “coalition of the willing”, which includes the UK, that are prepared to deploy forces to Ukraine.
But critically, they would only be there as part of a reassurance force, to prevent Russia from agreeing to a peace deal and then proceeding to rearm and reinvade. There is no European or British plan to send forces to Ukraine before a fully fledged peace deal has been done.
No peace deal is on the table. But Europe is trying to build a new order, outside the chaos caused by Trump. Its every move, though, is dogged by the Oval Office.
Russia has so far refused to negotiate even a ceasefire with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, claiming (among other things) that he lacks political legitimacy. The truth is he was elected by a landslide in democratic elections, and is now the head of a government under martial law.
Trump has repeatedly signalled that he is frustrated by the Kremlin’s rejection of real peace efforts, yet he gave Putin, who has been indicted as a war criminal, a flypast and red-carpet treatment at a recent summit in Alaska.
He may have imposed tighter economic sanctions against Russia during this administration, but Ukraine has seen US military aid slashed to zero and faces the continuous threat that the Pentagon will also cut off its intelligence feed.
Now the Financial Times has reported that funds for two programmes to support countries on the front line with Russia, notably the Baltic nations, are being cut by Trump, and there will be no more money after September next year.
Trump has struck some $228m (£168m) previously earmarked for Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania off his budget for future military spending, and a Pentagon programme is also being cut, slashing $1.9bn from support for Eastern European countries in their defence against Russia.
As the war grinds on, Trump has broadly accepted Putin’s view that Ukraine and Nato provoked Russia’s invasion in 2022. He has also ruled out US personnel being sent to Ukraine as part of any future force organised by the “coalition of the willing”.
No fan of the structures of international and humanitarian law, Trump has said it is likely that Russia would retain most, or all, of the territory it has captured in Ukraine – an arrangement that would violate international law.
On top of that, he has hosted Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is also an ICC-indicted alleged war criminal, in Washington.
And this week Trump gleefully released a video of the killing of 11 alleged drug traffickers who were killed, or “smoked” as Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defence put it, by a US missile in international waters.
“There’s more where that came from,” said Trump.
Targeting people on suspicion of involvement in criminal acts that pose no clear danger to a US citizen, or even an ally, is breathtaking. It is forbidden under international law and US military codes.
The White House says the dead were “narco-terrorists”. But the US has waged a “war on drugs” in South and central America for years without resorting to extrajudicial executions.
They are, however, a favoured tactic of Russia’s intelligence agencies. But they at least pretend they’ve not been involved in the use of nerve agents, radioactive poisons, and tossing Putin’s critics off balconies.
Trump, his secretary of defence and his secretary of state Marco Rubio have said that the US will continue attacks against alleged drug smugglers.
The US does not recognise the jurisdiction of the ICC and has already placed Karim Khan, the ICC’s prosecutor, under sanctions because of the court’s indictment of Netanyahu.
But it is likely that the court will investigate and could even bring charges against US cabinet members and the military for their actions, including the speedboat killings and any future operations.
The fact of a US president facing such an investigation will further undermine America’s place in Europe – and that suits Putin just fine.
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