For the first time in decades, European leaders face a US commander-in-chief who doesn’t care for Cold War-era pieties

If Donald Trump’s earlier characterization of Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator” and his repeated refusal to offer any disobliging description of Vladimir Putin had left any mystery as to where his affinity lies, he eliminated all doubt within 10 minutes on Friday at the tail end of a supposed diplomatic breakthrough in U.S.-Ukrainian relations. Joining with his vice president, JD Vance, in a tag-team humiliation of the Ukrainian president, Trump openly expressed his kinship with Putin as a fellow victim in “a phony witch hunt,” presumably referring to the well-established Russian intelligence and influence campaign to get Trump elected the first time. The American president further blamed Zelenskyy’s “tremendous hatred” of Putin as the main obstacle to peace rather than Russia’s continued bombardment or occupation of Ukrainian cities. Ukraine’s future as a sovereign country, Trump indicated, was not a matter of strategic imperative or American interest or principle, but rather a favor only Trump could bestow upon it if Zelenskyy played his “cards” right. (Casino metaphors are never far from Trump’s lips.)

For Europeans watching, one thing became clear. Washington now regards Kyiv as an adversary from which concessions must be wrung and terms of conditional surrender imposed, while it sees Moscow as an ally-in-the-making and the more justifiably aggrieved party in the war of conquest Moscow started three years ago.

Reaction in Europe was swift and virtually unanimous, with leaders rushing to social media to offer their unqualified support for Ukraine and Zelenskyy. Kaja Kallas, the former Estonian prime minister and new EU foreign minister, offered the starkest rebuke of the United States and Trump personally: “Today it became clear,” she posted on X, “that the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.”