A very Trumpian deal means Russia now faces a much more formidable Ukraine
In coming weeks — if US President Donald Trump's new plan is implemented — Ukraine will be armed with more powerful weaponry and much more of it.
The deal is very Trumpian. Trump the commander-in-chief has decided that Russia is about to face a much more heavily armed Ukraine, while Trump the businessman has decided that NATO — Europe and Canada — should pick up the bill.
The significance of what is now happening is that Trump has clearly lost patience with Vladimir Putin and has decided to put the Russian leader in a pincer movement.
The first part of that pincer is to impose a new regime of sanctions against Russia in 50 days if Moscow does not come to the negotiating table. Trump often sets long deadlines — with tariffs he set 60-day deadlines — which often are extended to the point where they lose meaning.
The second part — more important — is that the US will open its vast vault of arms for Ukraine in a dramatic increase to Ukraine's military capability.
Sitting alongside Trump as the deal was announced, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said: "It will mean that Ukraine can get its hands on really massive numbers of military equipment, both for air defence, but also missiles, ammunition, etc."
The most intriguing word in the NATO chief's sentence was "missiles". While Patriots are defensive systems — designed to hit and destroy any incoming missiles — "missiles" suggests more offensive weapons.
Reports have been emerging from the White House in recent days that Trump is so angry with Putin that he is prepared to authorise long-range missiles.
What appears to be happening is that the US is empowering Ukraine to use US weapons deep inside Russia, despite long-held fears such attacks could lead to a dramatic escalation.
The other interesting word in Mark Rutte's sentence is "etc". Neither Trump nor Rutte gave details of what type of missiles or offensive weapons would be available.
Instead, they were happy to talk about the defensive weapons — under the deal, Ukraine will get up to 17 Patriot systems almost immediately.
Trump says Ukraine will shortly receive them and they will be donated by NATO countries that already have them.
It has been a tortuous path for Trump to get to this point. The most famous rhetoric along that path has been Trump's claim, before his re-election, that he could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours.
The other person for whom this has been a difficult journey is Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
This new European-driven injection of military firepower is a big win for him.
In terms of Washington, he was politically close to dead after his disastrous White House meeting on February 27.
Zelenskyy was due to have lunch with Trump that day, but was essentially asked to leave after he and the president clashed before the world's cameras.
But over the months since, Zelenskyy has hung in, managing to rebuild his relationship with Trump.
There are now four clear and different agendas from the key players.
The Trump White House wants an early end to this war. They are not particularly interested in the terms of any ceasefire, but having framed it as "Biden's war" they want to be able to say they have done something that "Sleepy Joe Biden" could not.
Ukraine is fighting for its survival. It is slowly losing this war against an enemy who has no accountability when it comes to numbers of soldiers killed. They know that Putin can keep sending thousands of young Russians to the front line, as cannon fodder, for years, with no obvious pressure on the Kremlin leadership.
Russia knows it is winning on the battlefield. It saw that the Ukrainians were becoming fatigued and the US, under Trump, was beginning to lose commitment to defending Ukraine so wanted to try to wait out the Ukrainians.
But a newly angry Trump, who clearly believes that Putin has been toying with him, combined with a re-energised NATO, has changed the equation.
The Europeans are facing a real threat. There is a real fear among many of the European leaders and their publics — the "we could be next" fear.
Rutte has played a smart political game — he's kept Trump inside the NATO tent by convincing almost all NATO partners to increase their defence spending as a share of GDP to 5 per cent.
Had he not done this, Trump was flirting with the idea of walking away from NATO.
The changing reality of Ukraine highlights the volatility of the world today.
Over several months, Ukraine has gone from having its military and intelligence support from the US cut off — ordered by Trump when he was unhappy with the White House meeting — to now being in a position where it is on the verge of receiving a major boost of US military hardware paid for by Europe.
In this changing world of Donald Trump, nothing can be taken for granted.
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