Diplomacy With its Russia policy in ruins, Europe has few cards to play

In his Four Quartets T.S. Eliot wrote "humankind cannot bear very much reality".

- Patrick Wintour

At moments like these when there is simply too much head-spinning change and too many postwar assumptions being ripped from their moorings, it sometimes appears too much for any human to absorb, let alone offer a response.

In particular, the weeks between JD Vance's speech to the Munich security conference and the moment when Donald Trump cut off military aid to Ukraine, a concept is being tested – and possibly to destruction – that the US president remains open to European persuasion.

For many, the consequences of viewing Trump as more allied with Russia than Europe has simply been too momentous to contemplate. The pressure is especially acute for Keir Starmer, much lauded for the calmness with which he has tried to retain focus on the essential objective of keeping the US in line with Europe over the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine. The task is so hard because the British military, political, intelligence and foreign policy establishment has made practical support for Ukraine a centrepiece of its Russian policy for over a decade. Yet now Britain's greatest ally seems set on the destruction of that decade's work.

For the Foreign Office this is not just disorienting but akin to suddenly living in a world without maps. When Starmer was asked on Monday by the Scottish Nationalist MP Stephen Flynn about reports that Trump was poised to withdraw aid from Ukraine, the prime minister replied: "That is not their position."

Not many hours later, Trump's supposed confidant in Europe was on the phone to the president but Downing Street would not say whether he was told of the plan.

Reports then started appearing that the US was about to lift some sanctions on Russia, a step that would lift the siege so painfully built around its economy over the past three years.