Diplomatic escapology

How UK and France repaired vital alliance

- Patrick Wintour

The 11 days of whiplash-inducing talks British and French officials endured to repair shattered relations between Washington and Kyiv, and put Donald Trump's trust in Vladimir Putin to the test, could go down as one of the great feats of diplomatic escapology.

The dogged fence-mending may yet unravel as hurdles remain, principally the question of security guarantees for Ukraine, but for the first time, in the words of Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, the ball is in Russia's court. Putin, by instinct cautious, has preferred to watch from the sidelines, suppressing his delight as Trump denounced Volodymyr Zelenskyy to his face and wreaked vengeance by stopping all military aid and then pulling some US intelligence.

One European diplomat said: "Ever since the Oval Office catastrophe, the aim has been to put Putin in the spotlight, and to make Trump realise Putin is not his ally, but instead is who we say he is."

The diplomat admitted the manoeuvre had been difficult to pull off with emotions running so high, not just in Kyiv but in the capitals of Europe, where many regarded the Oval Office confrontation of 28 February as a well-planned plot to humiliate Zelenskyy and then cut him loose, and not a meeting that inadvertently spiralled out of control in front of the world's media. Figures as senior as the German chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, accused Trump of "a manufactured escalation".

The differing interpretations of the meeting's spectacular breakdown in part reflected wider instinctive divisions in Europe about whether the whole transatlantic alliance was salvageable, or could be jettisoned in the midst of this crisis.