If Ukraine was winning the war Trump would not have humiliated Zelensky in Washington and probably claimed the victory as his own, through originally arming Ukraine with Javelin anti-tank missiles.  But Ukraine is not winning, and its defeat would also be that of the United States.  Besides his egotistical aversion to being a loser, he has admitted that the only alternative to ending the war through negotiations with Russia is to escalate with the increased risk of a world war.

Thus, we got the ham-fisted proposals for a temporary and unconditional ceasefire forced upon Ukraine without meeting its demand for what it calls a security guarantee – the promise of direct Western intervention.  The promise of such an intervention would require a capacity to quickly attack Russia that the US has rejected but the British and French have supported without, however, having the capacity to do it.

At most, while it would incentivise Ukrainian belligerence and Zelenskyy’s propensity to provocation, it would involve a combined Ukrainian army fighting alongside the British and French.  Such a war would have a natural dynamic to rapid escalation and Russia is no doubt wary of a temporary ceasefire that might allow the Western ‘coalition of the willing’ to openly put its troops into Ukraine, leaving another ‘ball in Russia’s court’ on whether to attack or accept their presence.

The proposal for a temporary and unconditional ceasefire is an obvious trap and consistent with the months of speculation in the Western media that the best outcome is to freeze the conflict and thus freeze the Russian offensive.  Since this is Minsk 3 and, like the previous two, is a proposal to give Ukraine a breather until it is better prepared to reengage in war, there is no reason for Russia to accept it.  Even some in the Western media have admitted that there is little reason for Russia to agree.

Ukraine has anyway made it clear that while it wants a temporary ceasefire, it wants a longer one, and also wants all its pre-2014 territory back; will not reduce the size and power of its large armed forces and will still pursue membership of NATO.  With such red lines any sort of truce is doomed and pointless from a Russian point of view.

There is still scope to tighten sanctions that will hurt Russia, especially if they successfully involve reducing the demand for Russian energy exports from India, for example.  The incentive for India would be to avoid US sanctions itself while gaining US support, for what that’s worth, while the disincentive in geopolitical terms is the greater dependence of Russia on China with whom India seeks to balance against.

The EU with the support of the US could seize Russia’s frozen assets but if this was clearly legal it would have happened already.  The West, especially but not only the US, has however demonstrated that ‘the international rules based order’ means whatever it says it is.

The assets could thus be confiscated but this would require getting someone to buy them.  If Russian bonds were bought by Western central banks it would be equivalent to printing money with inflationary effects while securitisation guarantees to commercial banks to buy them would be expensive.  Germany is already seeing the cost of selling its bonds increase due to its plans to massively increase borrowing and Britain is in an even more parlous situation as Starmer’s ‘growth’ agenda is flailing.  Seizure would weaken the confidence of third countries in the security of holding Euro assets, and while it is claimed that there is no indication of concern, reluctance to do it is evidence of it, while this would have massive confirmation if they were actually taken.  Robbing a state of hundreds of billions of financial assets in no small thing.

Keeping the assets frozen is therefore a useful means of continuing to put pressure on Russia to accept a deal although there is no indication that it is sufficient to deliver what is demanded.  The short pause in supply of weapons by the US was of little consequence, while it’s not clear that the denial of intelligence was complete or even real.  Trump demanded that European states start paying more for constraining Russia and their consternation and outrage propelled them to agreeing – under the banner of independence from the US!  Europe is now just as subordinated to the US as before by taking an aggressive stance against Russia, led by Britain under Starmer, who stupidly thinks he can balance the US against the EU.  Britian is now in competition with France and Germany to lead the continent.  But lead it where?

Britain still wants to believe that it can be the favourite vassal of the US and carry the rest of Europe behind it, while the EU has selected a foreign policy diplomatic representative, Kaja Kallas, who declared the break-up of Russia as a good idea just before she got the job.  Diplomatic or what?  Further she blurted out the complaint that how could Europe defeat China if it could not do so to Russia?  So defeating China is now a goal of the EU?   European independence from the US plus hostility to Russia and China is not a recipe for strategic independence but for isolation.

The blunt demands of Trump and belligerent approach to Russia have put the question of European unity to the fore, which pulls against the historic and current role of a Britain that hopes it will suffer a different fate than the EU in Trump’s tariff war.  The unity of Europe is historically a progressive task that would erode the petty nationalisms that fed two world wars and currently feeds the rise of the far right. However, under capitalism this is being done through the promise of the militarisation of Europe upon the backs of its working class who will pay for it through austerity.

No doubt this will propel the statist left to seek refuge in petty nationalisms under the rubric of a ‘national sovereignty’ that Trump is proving illusory.  The Irish state is vivid demonstration of this as its Taoiseach grovelled before Trump, applauding his idea that the housing crisis is a good problem to have and staying stum about his plans for ethnic cleansing in Gaza.  Ireland is only the most obvious example of the power of US capital in Europe and the difficulty of achieving any sort of autonomy from it.

The European powers are committed to continuing the war, unless Trump decides to make them desist, which will depend on the circumstances of the war and its prospective resolution.  In this the ruling parties in Europe will find willing allies in the petty bourgeois left for whom the righteousness of the Ukrainian cause is absolute, regardless of the reality of the war, its current and potential consequences, and of the ethno-nationalist character of the Ukrainian version of bourgeois democracy.