Washington is ceding its firm leadership on Ukraine in favour of a tripolar dynamic

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer, European Commission's President Ursula von der Leyen, Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, Finland's President Alexander Stubb and Nato's Secretary General Mark Rutte, at the White House Library, in Washington, on August 18. ReutersShow less

This week's White House meetings on the Ukraine war have demonstrated how drastically the world has changed.

The US president wants to broker a deal that ends the fighting but doesn't seem overly concerned about the details. As long as Donald Trump can claim the status of international peacemaker and perhaps win a much-coveted Nobel Peace Prize, he will probably be satisfied. It's unmistakable political theatre.

Until now, in any such situation, there would be two camps: Russia versus a US-led western front backing Ukraine. But US policy has become so unrecognisable that there are now instead three poles – Russia, the US, and Ukraine backed by Europe – creating a triangle with Washington as the hypotenuse.

That means valuable European leverage and energy that could be used to pressure Russia is being diverted to prevent the US president from abandoning Ukraine, Europe, Nato and traditional US national security doctrines. They’re succeeding on that thus far, but there's no progress towards ending the conflict.

Russian President Vladimir Putin appears happy to continue talks with the fighting ongoing, confident his far more numerous forces can wear down the Ukrainian military. He's concentrating on shifting Mr Trump's attention and rhetoric away from demands for an immediate ceasefire, with some apparent success.

Mr Trump is instead focused on triangular talks between the three sides. Were this summit to take place, it could have a questionable outcome because neither party may be willing to make concessions to the other. They will only make concessions, if at all, to third parties such as the US or Europeans. It’s difficult to imagine a positive result emerging from a trilateral meeting while negative scenarios abound.

Were this summit to take place, it could have a questionable outcome because neither party may be willing to make concessions to the other

The sensible approach would be what has been, not entirely unsuccessfully, pursued between Israel and Hamas, with third party negotiators talking to both delegations. But proximity talks between professional diplomats is box office poison.

To Mr Trump – once a highly experienced and skilful television producer – a three-way summit may sound like a potential blockbuster. The cast is perfect if they play their roles together in person, and numerous readily available settings, such as the White House or a similar venue in Western Europe, would be a perfect backdrop for a magnificent peace-making spectacle.

But it’s hard to see how the Ukrainian and Russian positions can be bridged without a major change in the military and strategic equation on the ground. One side will have to essentially win.

It’s not impossible to imagine a ceasefire or even armistice in which Ukraine refuses to formally cede any land but that leaves parts of it in Russian hands. But even this bitter struggle over land isn’t the core of the conflict.

Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 with the confident expectation of establishing its own governing authority in Kyiv and eliminating Ukraine’s increasingly western-oriented state and society it found profoundly threatening. Ukraine, democratising despite rampant corruption, was even a “bad example” to Russians about their own political alternatives.

Certainly, Russia may want to annex Ukrainian territory, now packaged as potential “land swaps”. But what it really wants is to ensure that Ukraine doesn’t integrate further into the West creating, from Mr Putin’s perspective, an intolerable threat to Russia along much of its western border.

But greater integration into the West and Europe is precisely what Ukraine intends. These two positions are clearly irreconcilable and far more significant than the land deal on which Mr Trump seems focused.

Potential US or western “security guarantees” for Ukraine cut precisely to the point. Ukraine already received guarantees from the west, and Russia itself, in their denuclearisation agreements between 1991–1994. None of this protected Ukraine from Russia in 2014 or 2022.

The closest thing to a reliable guarantee would be for Ukraine to join Nato, the ultimate Russian red line. Mr Trump‘s negotiator, Steve Witkoff, spoke about the potential for new guarantees that would mimic Article 5 of the Nato treaty that is commonly interpreted to commit the US and other signatories to militarily defending any Nato member that comes under attack. It would effectively throw an American and European nuclear umbrella over Ukraine.

Unfortunately, Mr Trump has indicated several times that not only is he highly suspicious of Nato in general, he does not accept that Article 5 commits the US to defending anyone. Indeed, the Article was originally crafted to allow isolationist Americans to read it in this manner, although this has never been a White House perspective until now.

This conflict is simultaneously simple yet profound.

Ukraine wants to be independent, increasingly democratic and gradually join the EU and possibly even Nato. It sees its future as shaped by an identity that looks West rather than East. For Russia, all of that is simply unacceptable.

That leaves Mr Trump seeking an agreement he probably can’t get, especially if he allows Mr Putin to keep steering him away from the necessity for an immediate ceasefire. Russia can continue to wear down Ukraine on the battlefield, although a resumption of robust US military aid might eventually make that prohibitively costly.

Mr Putin wants time to press for additional advantage, while Ukraine needs all the help it can get. Ukraine still has rational hopes that even under Mr Trump, Washington will eventually resume backing its resistance to Moscow. But Mr Putin appears to skilfully be playing for time, equally rationally confident that his larger forces can wear the Ukrainians down, especially without US military aid.

We clearly see the extraordinary transformation of the global strategic landscape. What ought to be two sides is now three, with the US appearing to no longer lead, or even participate in, a western alliance defending Ukraine.

The 2022 Russian invasion may well be remembered as the turning point to a new era in international relations in which, for a time at least, whatever rules once existed are gone, and only might makes right. Under Mr Trump, Washington seems perfectly OK with that.