For East Europeans the overriding emotional issue is fear. Through the centuries Russia has proven itself to be a bad neighbour.
The Baltic States alone had more than 130,000 people arrested and sent to labour camps in Siberia. Their language and customs were suppressed and their countries were turned into KGB-controlled Big Brother informer societies. These events are well within living memory.
Unsurprisingly, they are taking the lead in calling for the toughest measures to support Ukraine and oppose Russia.
The further west one travels the more fear is replaced by the less tangible concerns such as freedom, democracy and the rule of law v autocracy and might is right. Big states like Russia must not be allowed to go about invading smaller states like Ukraine. If Putin is permitted to succeed then there will be dire consequences for the entire world.
This values-based assessment was the driving force behind President Joe Biden’s policy towards Ukraine and Russia. In addition, he was terrified that too much support for Ukraine could lead to a nuclear holocaust. Russia, does, after all, have the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Vladimir Putin’s thinly veiled threats to use his deadly arsenal fuelled those fears.
Donald Trump shares Biden’s terrors of nuclear war. In March he said: “This (the Ukraine War) could lead to World War III, very easily… because of nuclear weapons.” When Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky visited Trump, the US president shouted at him: “You are playing with World War III. You are playing with nuclear weapons.”
What Trump does not share with Biden, nor any of his NATO allies, is a respect for democracy and the rule of law and the need to defend it against autocrats such as Vladimir Putin. No, in Trump’s words, Putin is “a smart guy. I mean he’s got great control over his country.”
According to Trump, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was “genius.” And, of course, “Putin would never have invaded Ukraine if I were president. We respect each other.” Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy to everywhere, said that the Trump-Putin relationship is based on “personal affinity.”
It is the words “respect” and “affinity” That are at the nucleus of Trump’s apparent change of heart towards Putin and Ukraine. They are also the reason that it won’t last.
In several long and cordial telephone conversations, the Russian leader has repeatedly pledged his desire for peace and an end to the war. Each phone call has been quickly followed by massive missile attacks and deaths of Ukrainian women and children.
Trump is angry because he has been taken for a fool. Putin does not respect him. Putin feels no great affection or affinity for Donald Trump. He is using the American leader’s need to be seen as a great man to pursue his own agenda in Ukraine. Yes, he is a “genius,” but not in the way Trump sees him.
So, has Donald Trump finally awakened to the threat that Putin poses? No. He remains oblivious to the danger to democracy and rule of law that is personified by Vladimir Putin. Probably because he has no concern for those values. His only interest is that he—Donald Trump—has lost face.
Yes, he has agreed to send Patriot missiles and other weapons to Ukraine. But they are not a gift. The Europeans are paying America and then gifting the weaponry to Ukraine (“that’s just good business”). And he has refused to say when and how much.
As for the threatened 500 percent secondary tariffs on anyone who buys Russian oil and gas. Well, that is another TACO (Trump always chickens out) threat. The markets know it. The Russian stock exchange rose 2.7 percent with the issuance of the threat, and oil prices dropped.
The wizards of Wall Street know Trump cannot follow through on the secondary tariffs. They would destroy important trade negotiations with India and China and send prices at the American petrol pumps soaring. There would be a MAGA revolt.
Putin is almost certainly laughing at the Trumpian threats. Trump’s past pronouncements on the Russian leader have damaged his credibility and that in the end the US leader will almost certainly return to his policy of doubling down, chickening out and blaming everyone except himself.
Trump is piqued. He has taken Putin’s missiles as a personal attack on him. That is no way to run a 21st century foreign policy. Diplomacy should be based on national interests rather than personal interests. It needs a set of values that transcend party squabbles. The problem is that Donald Trump has no values.
* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”
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7 Comments
On July 6, my comment was: ‘The country’s top general reported this week: “Based on the results of May June, we can say that this year’s wave of the enemy’s summer offensive has failed.”
We should be wary of such promises. Each summer we are told ‘we are winning’.
Outside the Biden-Putin meeting in Geneva in early 2022, Zelensky said NATO had agreed that Ukraine could be part of NATO. Biden said this was not true. PLEASE can we stop the deaths, accept Putin’s red line and start negotiating.
Russia has one key red line. Let’s accept it and get a negotiated peace. The Foreign Affairs article spells it out: “Taking Ukraine’s NATO membership off the table will make such a deal much easier to attain. Putin is more likely to end the war if he is confident that Ukraine will not thereafter join NATO. In return, NATO should demand that Russia agree to not only a permanent end to the war but also a renunciation of further territorial claims as well as any restrictions on Ukraine’s armed forces and its ability to defend itself”.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/close-natos-door-ukraine?s=EDZZZ005ZX&utm_medium=newsletters&utm_source=fatoday&utm_campaign=The%20Right%20Path%20to%20Regime%20Change%20in%20Iran&utm_content=20250620&utm_term=EDZZZ005ZX
John, The problem is that Russia has several red lines. They are:
1- All the territories that he has occupied by force of arms
2- Additional territories
3- That Ukraine never join NATO
4- That the current democratically elected government resign
5- That Ukraine de-militarise.
These “red lines” would turn Ukraine into a puppet state controlled by the Kremlin and embolden Putin to employ similar tactics against other East European states. Those most worried are Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
Tom, you are absolutely right.
However the conclusion is probably even worse than you indicate as on 20 June 2025 at a media conference to mark the opening of the Saint Petersburg Economic Forum on he stated
“I have said many times that the Russian and Ukrainian people are one nation, in fact. In this sense, all of Ukraine is ours,”
and then added
“but you know we have an old parable, an old rule: wherever a Russian soldier steps, it is ours.”
I have come to the view that European and UK security may be better served by the admittance of Ukraine to Nato and the simultaneous withdrawal of the USA from the Nato treaty.
Ukraine has developed an advanced weapons industry, particularly in drones, that can be usefully integrated into a European defence alliance.
The USA has long had wider security concerns than the defence of Europe and good reason to avoid entanglement in European conflicts.
For Nato to be credible as a purely defensive alliance , it has to have a nuclear arsenal, independent of the USA, that is capable of deterring Russian imperial ambitions.
The calls to take Nato membership for Ukraine off the table are cited as Russia’s redline. However, It is not Russia’s redline, but that of Putin and other Russian nationalists that currently control the Kremlin. Denying Ukraine membership of Nato is ultimately appeasement of a violent dictatorship. Nato (absent the USA) cannot conceivably be viewed as a threat to Russian security only to its ambitions for territorial expansion and a sphere of influence it what it calls its near abroad.
European security is best served by the restoration of trading relations and freedom of travel between Russians and other Europeans; buttressed by an equal defence capability between Russia and significant European military powers including the UK, France, Germany, Poland and Ukraine.
Ukraine in NATO would be welcome. However I would expect opposition from US and Hungary. More favourable comments coming now from Turkey. If Britain, France and Germany can align to a common approach the chances could be boosted.
We have just returned from a cruise to Baltic ports, for pleasure, but we have learnt so much.
Even in Copenhagen (our first call) they are building up defences against Russia. In Estonia there are Ukraine flags everywhere, and in Latvia and Lithuania too there are flags and even picked up by us as tourists the constant fear of Russia.
Tour guides were telling tourists how careful they have to be about who they speak to and what they do, as there are Russian spies everywhere.
This is so sad in contrast to the joy and progress after gaining independence in 1990. In Lithuania the guide told us how they used to be the most depressed country in the world, with high suicide rates, but now they (he was an educational psychologist) are working hard with schools to build up hope and progress with their advanced technological and “using brain” industries and the country was 4th in the world for pupils per head of population for the number in higher education.
However 24% of the population was Russians who refused to learn to speak the language and kept on saying that they were waiting to be “rescued” by Russia.
Very understandably they were keen to impress us Brits, be our friends, and build up relationships. they could be next after Ukraine and need our help.
Lovely people, beautiful buildings, wanting to build on hope and progress (all as carbon neutral as possible!) yet living in fear with the threat next door.
The only lasting solution will stem from negotiations between the warring parties. For this to succeed each much have realistic objectives and a willingness to compromise. This must include incentives that result from global pressure on both sides for peace.