The exhaustion is showing. When Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, appeared in public this week, the lines on his face seemed as deep as the trenches that his hard-pressed troops dig on the front lines to resist Russian assault. There are few signs left of the fresh-faced politician that I first met more than six years ago, just after he was elected, when I worked for an international development bank helping to improve Ukraine’s economy.
The physical impact on him of more than four and a half years of wartime stress should be no surprise, but the events of the past few days appear to have shattered even his renowned resilience. Donald Trump, aided by or using his ideological fellow traveller Elon Musk, has turned a bad situation for Ukraine into something far worse.
Trump is already seemingly making a down payment on US pressure – restricting the speed of Musk’s Starlink satellite systems in Ukraine, which are used widely by the country’s military units. The decision is making it harder for Ukraine to launch strikes on Russian targets and to defend itself against jet-powered drone attacks.
Trump, through his sometime partner Musk, is making his feeling that Ukraine cannot win known.
Ukraine was already heading towards winter with a military problem because of the intensified air war, an economic problem and a humanitarian problem – but now, above all, it has an American problem.
It will mean a winter of maximum danger for Ukraine unless Britain and the EU can persuade Trump to shift position again.
With his latest interventions, the US President has once more shown Vladimir Putin that intransigence pays. Trump has, with one gift after another, lifted sanctions on Russian diesel, demanded that Ukraine stop striking the Russian refineries that help to finance and fuel the war and, behind the scenes, apparently, threatened to cut intelligence sharing with Ukraine and the sale of US weapons that Europe buys to pass on to the Ukrainians.
Throw in a demand for President Zelensky to resign and you get back to where we were when Trump took office for his second term: with a strong belief in the White House that the only way to end the war is to force Ukraine into a humiliating capitulation to all of Russia’s demands.
The next few months could be existential for Ukrainian resistance. Not because the army is about to collapse but because, in the face of a ramping up of the air war against Kyiv and other cities, the US appears to be turning its back on cries for help. There will be no Patriot interceptors to stop missiles, no diplomatic pressure on Putin and now, it seems, little or no Starlink.
Russia will use the breathing space to take maximum advantage. It is destroying the ability of a modern state to keep its cities warm, inhabitants fed and factories running. Many Ukrainians that I have spoken to are either fleeing Kyiv or think that they might have to in the days and weeks ahead. It will be a miracle if the morale-sapping drone and missile strikes on their families and friends in the country’s cities do not undercut the determination of Ukraine’s soldiers to keep fighting in terrible conditions at the front.
So, what should Britain and the EU do now to try to limit the damage? There are options.
The first is to stop treating Europe’s dependence on Washington as a paralysing factor.
It is clearer now, even though it has been evident for a long time, that Trump won’t provide reliable leadership, so the Europeans must step up with more confidence.
The priorities must be more air defence for Ukraine’s battered cities, with an acceleration of European manufactured systems. Production must be expanded so that bureaucratic delays do not dictate events on the ground. Europe must ensure that Ukraine can finance its defence and keep functioning as a state. The various support loans are an important foundation, but they must be transferred faster.
Zelensky is not perfect, he has not tackled corruption at home and is becoming more autocratic, but for now Ukraine and Europe’s interests are aligned and that is why we should stand by him, for all his failings. The shared goal is to stop Russia believing it can redraw the continent’s borders by force.
The message to President Trump from London, Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Warsaw and the other capitals should be blunt but constructive: Europe wants peace, too, but peace secured by making Russian assaults unviable, not by making Ukrainian resistance impossible.
Confronted by a unified and consistent approach, the US President might return to his previous middle ground rather than actively undermining Ukraine.
Winter will test Ukraine’s infrastructure, military and its public endurance. Trump’s latest posture will test whether the West’s commitment to national sovereignty survives the politicking of America’s midterm elections where Trump needs to show his voters that he is making progress on peace talks.
There is still time to prevent a diplomatic rupture from becoming a strategic catastrophe. But the clock is ticking.
If Europe waits for Trump to change his mind, it may discover that Putin has already changed the map.
When I went into that first meeting with that fresh-faced President Zelensky, in what seems like another world, I was part of a team helping him to improve his economy.
That door closed in 2022 with Russia’s launching of all-out war.
The least we can do now, in 2026, is help the older and more battle-hardened Zelensky to negotiate from a position of strength once any peace talks come.