Ukraine has a coalition of the unwilling

Can Europe get the US to tighten Russia sanctions and increase aid to Kyiv? If not, it will need a plan B.

- Gideon Rachman

If Russian President Vladimir Putin wants peace, he has a funny way of showing it. Over the weekend, Russia launched its largest aerial attack on Ukraine since the full-scale invasion of February 2022.

A day later, US President Donald Trump was asked if he was ready to intensify sanctions on Russia and responded laconically: "Yeah I am."

Mr Trump's comment may have sounded like an off-the-cuff response to the latest Russian attacks. In fact, it reflected the outcome of a call between the US President and 10 European leaders on Sept 4 that took close to two hours. The European leaders included French President Emmanuel Macron, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Finnish President Alexander Stubb.

During the call, Mr Trump was sometimes profane and confrontational. But the Europeans have got used to that. They believe they are close to getting the Trump administration to intensify secondary sanctions on buyers of Russian energy and stepping up military aid to Ukraine.

The White House argues, with some reason, that the Europeans should get their own house in order first. In Sept 4's call, Mr Trump called out the European Union for still importing energy from Russia. The European response was that EU purchases are now down to 20 per cent of pre-war levels — and a lot of that is accounted for by Hungary and Slovakia, the two member countries that are closest to Mr Trump's Maga (Make America Great Again) movement.