During the talks in Saudi Arabia, Washington and Moscow are going to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. At the same time, President Zelenskyy said that Ukraine will not recognize any agreements on Ukraine without the participation of official Kyiv.

The Trump's administration initiated a bilateral negotiation process with Russia. That has ended Putin’s isolation within the Western world. The United States, until recently the leader of the free world, decided to unilaterally start negotiations with the aggressor state of Russia without consulting NATO countries and without involving Ukraine, which poses a threat both the members of the Alliance and the United States itself.

The speech delivered by US Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference can be compared to the Munich betrayal of 1938 or to Putin's 2007 speech in Munich, when he declared war on the West (the West did not listen to it then, but later felt it after Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014-2022).

The strength of the United States lies in the results of the post-war order - with NATO, international law and international organizations, and strong allies in Europe, but not in the unprecedented lectures by American officials about the lack of democracy, freedom of speech and values in Europe, as well as about the absence of threats from Russia and China.

The split between the US and the EU, as well as within NATO, could result in replacing the United States as the leader of democracy, with China as the leader of the new authoritarian world order. These developments are already being celebrated in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang.

The Trump administration's policy has had a positive effect, as it has made the EU countries realize the urgent need to become a party to negotiations on a new geopolitical architecture of the world (as Russia, China and the United States are striving for), to immediately increase spending on their own defense and assistance to Ukraine, to produce more of their own weapons, and to expand their armies.

The EU’s has strongly criticized the new US policy, and it has made the Trump administration adjust both its own messages about negotiating on Ukraine without Ukraine, and refrain from further statements that would deepen the Euro-Atlantic split.

What’s important right is what decisions (not declarative statements) the EU will make and implement.

Many members of the US Republican Party, now led by Donald Trump, will not support the policy of appeasing Putin and abandoning Ukraine and NATO allies. Given his personality, Trump is not likely to agree to have a “European Afghanistan” for the United States (abandoning Ukraine). After all, this is exactly what Russia and its allies want: to permanently remove the United States from the leadership position.

We consider the crisis of American leadership and the tensions in the Euro-Atlantic camp to be a temporary challenge and an opportunity for Europe, the United States, and NATO itself to become stronger. Everything depends on further decisions and actions.

Ukraine and the EU should do everything to establish a Ukraine-US-EU negotiation format, agree on a common framework, and make a decision at the EU level on long-term military and financial assistance to Ukraine (including purchasing the weapons from the US), to ramp up sanctions against Russia, and monitor their implementation. The partners should also support the Ukrainian military morale by demonstrating unity with Ukraine during the 3rd anniversary of the large-scale Russian aggression in the war that began in 2014. They should also prepare for the deployment of the EU and the UK armed forces in Ukraine.

Contrary to current expert estimates, we are improving our forecast of both the risks of unfavorable negotiating conditions for Ukraine and the probability of the continuation of warfare in the next six months by 2 points.