What's at stake for Europe at the Trump-Putin summit on Ukraine?

RTÉ News​

a day ago

Analysis: The build-up to the summit highlights European doubts and concerns about Russia's sincerity to halt aggression in Ukraine
The end of the Cold War was once greeted in Europe as " the end of history". Both Naziism and communism - extreme ideologies that had caused violent turmoil and oppression during the 20th century – had collapsed. Liberal democracy had persevered and was unrivalled by the 1990s.
Western governments viewed liberal political and economic reform as vital to nurture peace and security in post-communist Europe. An enlarged security community covering much of the northern hemisphere " from Vancouver to Vladivostok" was an active political aspiration to reduce risks from violent conflict. Institutionalised through the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), this community aimed to enshrine the principles of the Helsinki Final Act agreed in 1975, most notably exclusive adherence to peaceful conflict resolution and no border changes by military force.
All has changed. This vision for a pan-European security order defined by enduring peace has been shattered by Russia's military aggression, first in Georgia in 2008 and subsequently in Ukraine after 2014, with Moscow escalating its offensive in 2022. Ukrainians have suffered the most by far, but this war has also caused many reverberations that weaken wider security in Europe.
When campaigning for a second US presidential term in 2024, Donald Trump claimed that he would resolve the war in Ukraine " in one day". But after his second term began in January 2025, Trump's administration has instead grappled with many arduous complications inflicted by Russia's aggression.
In recent days, Trump has outlined his exploratory expectations for the US-Russia summit with Russia's president Vladimir Putin in Alaska this week. Describing the summit as a " feel-out meeting", Trump claims that he is seeking a measure on Putin's seriousness for peace in Ukraine. His US administration describes the summit as a " listening exercise". Efforts to assist peace in Ukraine must be welcomed once these efforts are sincere.
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But the build-up to the summit highlights many continuing doubts on Putin's sincerity to halt Russian aggression. In Kyiv, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has raised concerns that Putin is "bluffing"about his intent to make peace. In Brussels, EU leaders fear that Putin will gain a diplomatic advantage over Trump to slowly ease Russia closer to the strategic aims it defined when it escalated its war in Ukraine in 2022. These aims included a forceful overthrow of the Ukrainian government; stifling stronger links between Ukraine and the EU and NATO; and consolidating a sphere of influence to insulate Russia's authoritarianism from the West's liberal democratic influences.
Putin is considered to have got the better of Trump at the Helsinki Summit between the two presidents in 2018. After this meeting, Trump appeared to publicly support the Russian president's view that Moscow had not interfered in the 2016 US presidential election, despite contrary information communicated to him by America's own security agencies. Seeking to avoid being out-manoeuvred by Putin again, Trump has threatened "very severe consequences", meaning further sanctions will be proposed, should Russia refuse to take US peace efforts seriously. Missing the military power that converts into diplomatic clout, the EU is forced to watch a summit that will likely impact its future security from the sidelines.
Trump has discussed " land swapping" as a means to settle the conflict while insisting that such arrangements can only be confirmed by direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. De jure border change is unacceptable for Ukraine. However, Kyiv might still painfully accept some de facto compromises understood as temporary until future political circumstances change to allow Ukraine to restore full functional sovereignty within borders benchmarked from its independence in 1991.
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Should Russia retain de facto military control over territories in eastern Ukraine, a large risk remains that Moscow will use this presence to slowly grind away to coerce and undermine Kyiv in its aims to accelerate Ukraine's democratisation and EU integration. The Trump administration has frustrated Ukrainian attempts to gain a clear pathway towards NATO accession. According to US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, "the United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement".
The Alaska summit also offers Putin an opportunity to propose limitations on Ukraine's future military strength as a condition for Russia's consent to progress settlement talks. Washington is Ukraine's most important military supplier, handing Trump some leverage to pressure Zelenskyy to accept limits on Ukraine's future defence capabilities. This would undercut Ukraine's potential for independent deterrence but with Russia remaining free to replenish its military power to threaten Ukraine again.
Observing developments on Ukraine, EU member states at the bloc's frontline with Russia remain concerned that Putin will skilfully manipulate Trump's peace efforts to instead piecemeal towards the aggressive aims he originally revealed in 2022. Should Russia gain such momentum, EU governments in Finland, the Baltic states and Poland anticipate that Moscow's military aggression will only gain further impetus.
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Putin's mistakes directed Russia into an unexpectedly long and attritional military campaign where a staggering one million Russian soldiers have died by 2025. However, a negotiated reprieve in Ukraine matched with Trump's ambivalent commitment to NATO will have retrieved Putin's ambitions to eventually challenge the alliance. If a frozen conflict is the most likely compromise to emerge from current negotiations on Ukraine, tensions simmering at the fault line that Russia has created there will endure to undermine European security.
Unpredictable and unstable, this order contrasts starkly with optimistic aspirations of peace "from Vancouver to Vladivostok" expressed after the Cold War. In the sentiments of Finnish president Alexander Stubb, Europe's " holiday from history" is now over.