Next few months may well be crucial to Europe's security map

Reluctantly, Mr. Trump has now admitted that Russia is playing him.

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As the US President put it in his characteristically colorful language: "We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin." But the American leader is not yet willing to admit that his entire policy on Russia was misconceived from the start; he is merely prepared to accept that his strategy has not worked out yet.

This is the reason for the complicated arrangement under which the US will sell weapons to Europe, and the Europeans, in turn, will transfer these weapons to Ukraine. The deal allows Mr. Trump to claim that the US is no longer "wasting" its taxpayers' money on Ukraine and is even making a tidy profit on its sales of weapons, while at the same time still propping up the Ukrainians.