Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.

“Plan A is: Get the shooting to stop,” said U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday, noting the U.S. administration’s main goal is to secure a quick ceasefire before moving on to broader talks about a settlement to permanently end Russia’s war on Ukraine.

But that clearly isn’t what Russian President Vladimir Putin has in mind, as he demonstrated by withholding his agreement to a full 30-day ceasefire in his 90-minute phone conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday. Shortly after the call, Russia launched a drone assault over Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.

Offering the diplomatic bare minimum, the Russian leader said he would hold off striking at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for 30 days — a self-serving concession as that will save Russia’s energy system from being hit by the Ukrainians, who have just dramatically increased the range of their powerful Neptune subsonic cruise missiles from 200 kilometers to 1,000 kilometers.

All in all, Trump and his motley crew of special envoys, family members and presidential pals seem keener to converge with Russia on broader geopolitical issues than really press Putin hard on Ukraine.

The Kremlin’s read-out from the call was long on the idea of a broad Washington-Moscow reset — on topics ranging from economic cooperation to ice hockey — and short on anything that looked like a meaningful peace deal for Ukrainians.

In a sign that a real breakthrough is a remote prospect, Russia stuck firmly to its maximalist guns on demanding an end to military aid and intelligence to Kyiv, while wanting a fix to the “root causes” of the war — Kremlin shorthand for eviscerating democracy in Ukraine and thwarting the country’s political trajectory toward NATO and the EU.

Going along with Volodya

The Trump camp is showing it is all too ready to go along with Putin as he purposely mixes discrete stages of the Ukraine negotiations, changing the sequencing either to ensure any final settlement is firmly in Russia’s favor or to avoid acceding to a full ceasefire altogether.

The Russian leader and his top aides have been emphatically outlining their red lines for a peace deal over the past weeks — conditions that would, in effect, rip the state of Ukraine to shreds. They want guarantees Ukraine will never join NATO; that it will remain geopolitically neutral and unable to command its own fate, with severe limitations on weapons. Moscow also wants Crimea and the four eastern oblasts they claim as part of the Russian Federation to be internationally recognized as such. And they’ve ruled out the deployment of European troops to monitor any peace deal that’s agreed.

In short, Russia is delivering an absolute “no” to the security guarantees Ukraine wants to protect it against what its sees as inevitable further attacks from Putin.

Rather than wait for formal peace talks, the Kremlin is trying to cajole agreement on its red lines now, holding the ceasefire proposal hostage without having to formally reject it — a move that would risk Trump’s wrath. Trump has promised more sanctions against Moscow if Putin doesn’t commit to a peace deal but, for now at least, he’s allowing the Russian president to slip off the hook and set the tempo.

A familiar playbook

Watching this play out, some commentators argue Putin is dithering, playing for time and unable to make up his mind. But it can also be said that he is merely dipping into a playbook he’s used before. Much like he did with American negotiators over Syria, he’s forcing his interlocutors deeper into a labyrinth of conditions and “root causes,” seeking to wear them down and either manage to secure his main goals or drive everything into an interminable back-and-forth.

As far as the Kremlin sees it, negotiations are the continuation of war — just by other means.

In flipping the negotiation process, Putin is getting a helping hand from Team Trump.

Trump and his special envoy Steven Witkoff have already been discussing the terms of the settlement in order to try to get the ceasefire deal, while Trump and Putin have been talking about “land,” “power plants” and “dividing up certain assets” before any “official” peace talks.

Before speaking with Putin this week, Trump boasted on his Truth Social media platform that “many elements of a Final Agreement have been agreed to.”

That’s news to Ukraine. Trump notionally agreeing to Putin’s terms about land and Ukraine’s assets is forcing Kyiv into a position of either rolling over and accepting what the two leaders have privately agreed or rejecting the pre-packaged deal.

If Ukraine were to object to being presented with a fait accompli, Putin can simply blame Kyiv for any breakdown in negotiations, which would feed into Trump’s predisposition to identify Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as the villain.

Team Trump has already made its disdain for Zelenskyy patently clear. It was on public display during the ugly clash in the Oval Office in February. And it has also been made obvious behind-the-scenes, with the secret talks between members of Trump’s entourage and Zelenskyy’s domestic political rivals, which POLITICO revealed earlier this month.

Those talks were part of a U.S. bid to muster support for early elections — which they’re convinced Zelenskyy would lose, despite current opinion polls indicating otherwise. And according to three Ukrainian lawmakers and a Republican foreign policy expert, all granted anonymity to speak freely, the back-channeling involved Trump’s son Don Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner, controversial conservative talk-show host Tucker Carlson and Witkoff — the latter being the only one who has any official role. POLITICO has since reached out to all four for comment about the talks but has received no response.

“They see Zelenskyy as an impediment,” the Republican foreign policy expert said. “How do you undercut Zelenskyy and make him more compliant? Well, you engage his political adversaries, and you show him that the United States has other Ukrainian partners and other options.”

“But I think that much of the Trump world, or at least some of the Trump world, is delusional in thinking they can anoint someone in Ukraine to be their partner and to electorally succeed in the short-to-medium term whenever elections take place,” they added. “It’s very much a lack of understanding of Ukraine.”

Likewise, there may be some delusion as to what Putin is about, as he tries to dictate the broad terms of a final deal before the guns have fallen silent — terms that if largely accepted, would accomplish his main war aim: subjugating Ukraine and keeping it within Moscow’s grasp.

“Putin appears to have been partially successful in holding the ceasefire proposal hostage as part of his efforts to extract preemptive concessions from U.S. President Donald Trump in negotiations to end the war,” the Institute for the Study War noted, in a similar vein.

“Putin is attempting to change the sequence of talks in order to push Trump into making preemptive concessions on issues that are not part of the U.S.-Ukrainian temporary ceasefire but are part of Russia’s war aims,” the think tank warned.

The US stock market is spooked and his henchmogul’s companies are floundering. Has the great dealmaker been building up … the wrong nation?

Naturally I assumed the feeling would pass, but one whole week after the US president turned the lawn of the White House into a crappy car dealership, I keep finding myself feeling … optimistic. I know, I know. But if anything, I find myself feeling a little bit more optimistic every day – and sometimes a lot more. Not for America, which keeps electing him, but for the rest of the world. It really would take a heart of stone for governments from Beijing to Delhi to Warsaw to look at the clip of this old guy trying to sell his friend’s electric cars and not think: “Ooooooooh, that is very, very bad vibes. Still, it’s good for us!”

In China they have ironically nicknamed Trump “the nation builder”, meaning he is doing an incredible, bigly impressive job of bolstering the Chinese nation. Not to be disrespectful to that ancient golf bore holding the little piece of paper listing his car salesman talking points and gibbering “everything is computer”… but can this guy even organise an oligarchy? He’s certainly making his precious stock market run, stricken, in the direction of the nearest bathroom.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

The EU has its Trojan horses and Nato’s cornerstone has crumbled. But European allies, including the UK, are bound by an urgent shared purpose

Moscow’s immense military mobilisation is clearly not aimed just at Ukraine. Unless Vladimir Putin accepts a ceasefire with meaningful security guarantees there will be no end in sight to the war. If anything, we could see the extension of Russia’s aggression beyond Ukraine. The bleak reality is that Europe still faces an unprecedented threat and notwithstanding signs of progress for Ukraine at talks in Jeddah, we face it alone.

Worse, we now have to confront it with the US working against us. Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump appear to share a plan: a Vichy-like regime in Ukraine and a European continent split into spheres of influence, which Russia, the US (and perhaps China) can colonise and prey upon. Most European publics sense this. A critical mass of European leaders gets it too. They are beginning to act.

Nathalie Tocci is a Guardian Europe columnist

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US betrayal of Ukraine is the rehearsal for a grander bargain with Moscow and an assault on continental solidarity

A prime time current affairs programme; a discussion about Donald Trump’s handling of the war in Ukraine. “He’s doing excellent things,” says a firebrand politician on the panel, before listing White House actions that have belittled Volodymyr Zelenskyy and weakened his battlefield position – military aid suspended; satellite communications obstructed; intelligence withheld. “Do we support this?” It is a rhetorical question.

“We support it all. Absolutely,” the celebrity host responds. “We are thrilled by everything Trump is doing.”

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

I sometimes like to fool myself that the worst has passed. It's reassuring, in a period where there's precious little reassurance to be found. I tell myself that we'll look back on these last few weeks, in the dead of winter, in the dark and the cold and the abject bloody horror, and wonder how we managed to keep hope alive before things improved.

This week, for the first time, it was possible to feel a sense of optimism while still being at least vaguely rational. You could finally see where resistance might come from - how it might proceed, what form it might take. Europe started to take decisive practical steps towards its future.

Keir Starmer's London summit on Sunday worked to entrench support for Volodymyr Zelenskyy after last week's disaster in the White House, bringing together European leaders and others in a show of solidarity. Later in the week, Emmanuel Macron's televised address was vivid, dynamic and strategic. His proposal for a French nuclear umbrella to cover its neighbours is finally being given the respect it deserves by countries like Poland and Lithuania. "This readiness of France," Polish prime minister Donald Tusk said, "this is something very promising."

Norway, which had failed to give Ukraine anything like the funding it was morally obliged to, finally changed its tune. The country has done well out of the war, earning billions by selling gas to European countries. But it stuck to fiscal rules that have kept its payments to Ukraine below those of its Scandinavian neighbours. This week, that changed. The Norwegian government announced it would more than double its support, from €3 billion to €7.2 billion.

Then there was the announcement that Germany's future coalition parties - the CDU and SPD - had agreed to reform the county's debt rules to fund rearmament. This development was so big it defeated language. The only word which really summarised the scale of the change was the one deployed by Reuters: 'Tectonic'. This vast country, this sleeping giant, was waking up, with a €500 billion infrastructure fund and no borrowing restrictions for defence.

The euro rose at its strongest level in months after the news. European defence company shares soared. European stock markets are suddenly performing strongly. And with that money came a new, slightly American can-do attitude. This week, shares of Eutelsat, a European rival to Elon Musk's Starlink, surged. As they did so, the company's CEO assured investors that it could match Starlink's terminals in "a couple of months, not years".

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Yesterday, European leaders gathered in Brussels. Commission president Ursula von der Leyen put down a proposal for loans totalling €150 billion and a series of five options for defence funding. It's not enough money and some of the systems for securing it are problematic, but that’s OK. The summit was never going to solve everything. It's just a start.

The important thing is there has been a fundamental psychological change. US/Russian alignment has fixed European minds. This was an opening gambit involving national and EU budgets and EU borrowing mechanisms. In future, if things continue to deteriorate, it is likely to involve €200 billion in frozen Russian funds and a new €800 billion EU funding facility. They are not fucking about here. They are talking about seriously big measures. There is a sense of seriousness and clear-sightedness about Europe that has previously been completely absent.

Look at the way that decisions are being reached. At previous summits, Hungary's leader Viktor Orban, who functions as Putin's puppet in the EU, was able to sabotage proceedings. He’s been doing this for years now. This time, there was every indication he'd be able to do the same thing again, working alongside Slovakia's prime minister, the thug-faced cunt Robert Fico.

Some half-arsed language-tweaking bought him off, leaving Orban exposed. Instead of allowing him to derail procedures, the EU simply put out a separate statement without Hungarian backing. They isolated him. If Orban has any sense about him, he’ll pay careful attention to what happened to him yesterday and alter his behaviour accordingly. If not, he may find the EU tougher than it has been previously.

This is the latest example of a 'coalition of the willing'. Sidestep the existing structures if they restrict action. Proceed with what's possible.

Britain is obviously outside the EU, but it held the crucial summit last Sunday which reaffirmed the world's commitment to Ukraine. Who was invited? Many European states, but also the Turkish foreign minister, the Nato secretary general and Canada. Today, von der Leyen will be holding videoconference calls to debrief non-EU states Canada, Iceland, Norway, Turkey and the UK.

This is partly a result of the strange forum-disruption we've seen. Nato doesn’t work because the US is inside it. The EU doesn't quite work because the UK and other pertinent countries are outside it - and it's anyway not set up for this sort of thing. Quite how this will all proceed is currently unclear. But what is clear is that we are seeing a practical, fluid approach to decision-making. That is evidence of people who recognise the danger, who are finally behaving with the degree of urgency that is required by this historic moment.

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What does all this mean for Britain?

Whether we admit it or not, we are experiencing a fundamental change in our relationship with Europe. Starmer will not say it out loud. He will insist that there is no choice to be made about America and Europe. He might even believe that. You still hear reports of figures in the Foreign Office who intend to hold America tight until the bitter end, no matter how overwhelming the evidence becomes of its moral and operational collapse. But the basic dynamics are clear for all to see and they point towards Europe.

A new page is being turned in British-European relations. It is blank. There is no writing on it. And there is nothing in all the world more exciting and full of possibility than a blank piece of paper with no writing on it.

For decades our relationship with Europe - our entire sense of our place in the world - has been pulled in two directions. Churchill encapsulated it. On the one hand, he recognised that Europe must be "united in the sharing of its common inheritance" and that this would require the "gradual assumption by all the nations concerned of that larger sovereignty which can alone protect their diverse and distinctive customs". On the other, as he told ministers on the day of his resignation, his core foreign policy belief was that we must "never be separated from the Americans".

This is the same binary which Starmer now insists doesn't exist. In practical terms, he's usually right. But psychologically, these two visions tore us apart. The American vision corresponded to the Second World War story we told ourselves as if it were an origin myth - saving Europe with the last-minute help of our plucky English-speaking allies. But the European vision offered a cooperative, collegiate, egalitarian arrangement which was obviously much better suited to us than a distant relationship with a far more mighty partner which had no need to take our views into account and consequently rarely did so.

All the big moments of breakage with Europe have been about a dream of our relationship with America. Thatcher was raised with precisely that Chruchillian story of the Second World War. She treated the US president like an emperor who radiated light and the Europeans as meddling bureaucrats to be browbeaten into submission. In her third term, all lingering elements of sanity and good sense gone, she developed a kind of madcap Star Wars goodies-and-baddies rhetoric about Europe in which it was trying to "extinguish democracy" and "dissolve our national identities". Unbelievably, this language took hold of the imagination of the British right. In 2016, after decades of ensuing cognitive deterioration, it ruined us.

We now have the chance to write a new story. We have the chance to end this pathology. It's not just that the case for Europe is easier. It's that the case for the US is harder.

Atlanticists are now having to grapple with a ruinous series of refutations of their position: The attempted humiliation of Zelenskyy. JD Vance's dismissive ignorance of the British war dead. Trump's insistence yesterday that Europeans would not come "protect us" under Nato's Article 5 clause, despite the fact that the only time that clause was triggered it specifically involved Europeans coming to America's defence.

Britain has done well from the American alliance - intelligence sharing, cheap storage for nuclear missiles, participation in the Lockheed Martin F-35. It has locked us into the American orbit in a way that will be hard - although not impossible - to change. But the way we are currently spoken about in Washington reveals the deep imbalance of power which defines the relationship. Even if none of the practical geopolitical changes we see today were taking place, the emotional quality of the conversation makes it almost impossible to maintain a pro-American position.

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There are no guarantees here. So many things could go wrong. The British foreign policy establishment could be too narrow-minded to act. Starmer might really mean the nonsense he's saying about there being no choice between America and Europe. The Europeans might lose their sense of momentum. Things could collapse so quickly in Ukraine that we simply do not have the time to defend it. Pro-Putin populists on the continent could benefit from benefit cuts or tax rises introduced to assist rearmament.

But then, it's not exactly hard to spot the dangers at a moment like this. God help us we've done enough of that already. There is also hope, even if it is tentative and vulnerable.

Everything has started to move in one direction: the politics, the dynamics, the money, the connections, the personal relationships, the forums, the momentum, the markets. From the London summit on Sunday to the Brussels summit on Thursday, something new is beginning to take hold. It is a vision of a Europe that is prepared to do whatever it takes to defend the West, one which is prepared to work ambitiously and practically to protect its values. One which needs Britain and which Britain would necessarily need to be involved in.

It's a new world out there, constructing itself in real time right outside your window. Fucking terrifying, to be honest. Full of dangers and horrors and monstrous things lurking in the shadows. But there is hope there too. You don't even need to look that hard for it anymore.