The clock is ticking for Europe amid doubts about U.S. support for Ukraine

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, right, and President Donald Trump, talk as they attend the funeral of Pope Francis in Vatican, Saturday, April 26, 2025
| Photo Credit: AP

President Donald Trump is pushing Ukraine to cede territory to Russia to end the war, threatening to walk away if a deal becomes too difficult — and causing alarm bells in Europe about how to fill the gap.

Ukraine’s European allies view the war as fundamental to the continent’s security, and pressure is now mounting to find ways to support Kyiv militarily — regardless of whether Mr. Trump pulls out.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accusing him of prolonging the “killing field” by pushing back on his demand that Ukraine hand over occupied Crimea to Moscow.

Mr. Trump’s land-for-peace plan would mark a significant shift in the post-Second World War order, ripping up conventions that have long held that borders should not be redrawn by force.

“It took a World War to roll back de jure annexations and 60 million people died,” said François Heisbourg, special adviser at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris, referring to the pre-war annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany.

“Europeans will not accept it” and Ukraine will not either, he said.

Diplomats and experts described various scenarios if the U.S. decides to walk. They range from the U.S. ceasing direct aid to Ukraine — but allowing European nations to pass on critical American intelligence and weapons to Kyiv — to Mr. Trump banning transfers of any American technology, including components or software in European weapons.

Money and weapons

Any withdrawal of U.S. military aid to Ukraine could create serious difficulties for Europe, analysts and diplomats say. Kyiv’s ability to keep fighting would depend on European political will to muster money and weapons — and how quickly the gaps left by Washington can be filled.

If it were easy, Europe would “already be doing things without America,” said a European diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

No new U.S. aid package for Ukraine has been approved since Mr. Trump came into office, even as European nations have collectively provided Ukraine with more aid than Washington, according to the Keil Institute.

Europe has contributed around $157 billion, some $26 billion more than the U.S., although Washington slightly outpaces Europe when it comes to military aid, the Germany-based institute said.

It will be hard, but there are ways Europe can find cash to fund Ukraine — including seizing frozen Russian assets — but “money isn’t what you shoot bullets with,” Mr. Heisbourg said.

Europe’s “big mistake” was undertaking major military downsizing following the Cold War and thinking “this war started in February 2022 and not in February 2014,” when Moscow invaded and then annexed Crimea, said Thomas Gomart, director of IFRI, a French international affairs think tank.

Europeans are scrambling to acquire weapons for themselves and for Ukraine, while confronting constraints on production capacity, a fragmented defence industry and a decades-long reliance on the U.S.

Some extra production capacity could come from Ukraine, which has ramped up manufacturing of ammunition and drones since Russia’s invasion. Much harder to replace, experts said, are advanced American weapons, including air defences.

Russia has attacked Ukraine almost nightly since Mr. Putin’s forces invaded in February 2022, flooding the skies with missiles and drones, including dummy attack drones to exhaust Ukraine’s limited air defences. In April, at least 57 people were killed in multiple strikes.

The death toll from the Russian attacks would “inevitably” be higher without the American Patriot air-defence missile systems protecting Ukraine’s skies, said Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

The Patriots can track and intercept Russian missiles, including the hypersonic Kinzhal. Kyiv uses them to protect critical infrastructure, including the country’s energy grid.

Earlier this month, Mr. Zelenskyy asked to buy 10 Patriots, a request Mr. Trump dismissed. “You don’t start a war against someone 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles,” he said, a day after a Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy killed 35 people.

France and Italy have given Ukraine their Aster SAMP/T air-defence system but the issue is not “quality, it’s quantity,” Mr. Barrie said, pointing to the larger U.S. defense industrial base and greater U.S. stockpiles.

Wait-and-see game

Although Mr. Trump criticised Mr. Putin over the weekend for his missile strikes and suggested imposing more sanctions on Russia, for Europe it remains a wait-and-see game.

A worst-case scenario could see a ban on American weapons exports and transfers to Ukraine, which would bar European nations from buying U.S. weapons to give to Kyiv or transferring weapons with American components or software, Mr. Barrie said.

That could mean countries, including Germany, that have already given American Patriots to Ukraine would be prohibited from doing so. “It’s one thing for the U.S. to cease to be an ally, it is another for the U.S. to be an enemy,” Mr. Heisbourg said, noting that such a step could also damage the U.S. defence sector if weapons purchases were perceived to be unusable on Mr. Trump’s political order.