by Pierre Vimont
The second administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has made 2025 a rollercoaster ride for the EU, with Brussels trying to keep up with a steady flow of destabilizing initiatives from Washington. Each fresh diplomatic drama surrounding the war in Ukraine—from a shouting match in the Oval Office, to the Alaska summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, to the so-called twenty-eight point peace plan and its successors—has left Europe improvising its damage limitation with varying levels of success.
Rather than remaining sidelined and stuck in crisis management mode, it is time for Brussels to come up with its own considered strategic response. It should be no less than a European vision for the whole continent that sets out its own plans for security, as well as the parts that the EU, NATO, the United States, Ukraine, and Russia should play in a future order.
The winds are not favorable for Ukraine and Europe, as the latest push for peace has only made the situation worse for both their interests. The Trump administration chose to publish their proposal just as Kyiv and European allies faced new setbacks. The Ukrainian army is struggling to regain the military initiative in the Donetsk region and the country’s leadership has been hit by new corruption scandals. Meanwhile, despite protracted discussions, the EU has been unable to finalize plans for a reparation loan to Ukraine backed by Russian frozen assets. All of this takes place in a context where the Russian economy has stayed more resilient than expected in the face of unprecedented sanctions.
The combination of these adverse events must not overshadow the significant difficulties Russia is also experiencing. Yet the U.S. plan stirs a new sense of urgency among Europeans. American negotiators remain convinced that time is on Russia’s side and Ukraine is irreversibly on the back foot. From that point of view, this latest initiative has already changed Europe’s diplomatic parameters. By requiring that Kyiv and its allies consider the stark necessity of political compromises and painful concessions, this peace plan is a dire reminder of a hard reality.
Naturally, the final outcome of the negotiations is far from certain. Though talks could quickly come to a halt, the Russian government seems intent on keeping the ball rolling to avoid a breakdown in its relations with the United States. If negotiations move ahead, they will almost certainly not meet all the political goals Kyiv and Brussels have openly advocated for, because of unbalanced American brokering. These talks may well simply break down, but the risk then would be of losing both Washington’s diplomatic efforts and its remaining support to Ukraine.
Both options back the EU into a corner. As it is unable to significantly increase its overall financial and military support to Ukraine, Brussels cannot expect the situation on the battlefield to change much. With Russian troops maintaining their slow advance, there is little hope of U.S. negotiators easing their current pressure on Kyiv or coercing Moscow into major concessions.
For Europe, therefore, this is a time of reckoning. To escape these difficulties, leaders must kickstart a revamped and more agile diplomacy. They can only achieve this by engaging in the discussions they have avoided for too long: on a possible European peace plan for Ukraine, and on a new vision of a future security order for the continent. Such a debate will inevitably expose deep divergences among union members on issues where the legacies of history and geography have forged natural differences among them. But moving out of this prolonged strategic silence is imperative, if only to regain the initiative and be perceived as a relevant player.
This strategic input must help bridge the gap between the focus of U.S. negotiators on quickly delivering a peace settlement and the European focus on brokering a long-term outcome that opens the way to a sustainable security order. Such vision demands a clear understanding of the security guarantees required for Ukraine, the positioning and role of NATO in a postwar context, the responsibilities of a future European defense union, and the kind of contacts the EU needs to progressively build with Russia in order to define new rules for a likely unstable future coexistence. Unavoidable compromises and mutual concessions will have to be made on issues like territorial recognition, NATO accession for Ukraine, or security guarantees. Likewise, these will have to be reconciled with long-term considerations to preserve core principles adopted when the Soviet Union fell.
The EU has enough leverage to achieve some genuine agency in negotiations. Be it sanctions, Russian frozen assets, security guarantees, or accession to the EU, Brussels has the cards to drive a nimble diplomacy that acts in close tandem with Ukraine. Such agility will advocate for innovative ideas and introduce an additional negotiation track dedicated to specific, long-term discussions on a revisited European security framework.
For a very long time, Europeans have preferred to avoid uncomfortable strategic debates because they knew any such discussion would reveal inherent divisions among union members—particularly when considering possible engagement with Russia. Yet this attitude has brought twenty years of strategic carelessness that must now be recouped. It is high time for the EU to confront the reality check imposed by the present negotiations and start its own strategic conversation.
*Published first on Carnegie - Strategic Europe
By: N. Peter Kramer