The question for Putin will be: what do I push for next?

As Europe and Nato face a shift in global alliances, the real test will be when the time to act arrives, writes Keir Giles

- Keir Giles

The announcement that the United States is to suspend all military aid to Ukraine has turned support for Kyiv from an urgent problem for Europe into an immediate one. It’s a vital test for the continent’s decision-makers, and the cost of failing it could be catastrophic. There have been signs that Europe’s leaders have, belatedly, grasped the urgency. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen chose the moment to present a long-overdue “Rearm Europe” plan.

But that comes on top of efforts already underway to find an end to the conflict and preserve Ukraine as a viable state. Sunday’s summit of Western countries backing Kyiv made all the right noises about stepping in to make a peace settlement work. But the four-point plan announced by Keir Starmer leaves a lot of questions unanswered – not least, how it is going to work without cooperation from Russia or the United States.

Unlike Trump’s administration, European leaders are taking a reality-based approach to any possible ceasefire: that past performance indicates Russia will breach it at the first opportunity. That’s what makes it so clear that the description of any foreign military presence in Ukraine as “peacekeepers” is dangerously misleading. Far from the popular idea of peacekeepers as a lightly armed police mission, if European forces are to be deployed to Ukraine, they need to be fully capable of defending themselves when Russia restarts the war.

But that’s also why Starmer has repeatedly stated that no peace plan will work without the US underwriting it. He has done so despite the US repeatedly stating that it is not willing to do so. It’s not yet clear how that gap is supposed to be bridged.