The clock is ticking on Europe’s military and political commitments to Ukraine. The Times earlier this week reported that European states, despite their initial enthusiasm, would be unable to provide the appropriate number of troops in the event of a peace deal. European allies have apparently pointed out to UK Defence Secretary John Healey that Britain’s ambition for a standing multinational force of 64,000 would, in practice, require a total of 256,000 troops, accounting for rotations. That’s a number that simply cannot be raised by Europe’s long underfunded armies.

This is even more stark now that the US and Ukraine have signed the long-awaited minerals deal. Donald Trump, ever the savvy businessman, said: “Biden handed them $350 billion. We made a deal where we get much more in theory than the $350 billion.” The US will naturally want to protect its stake in Ukraine’s rare earths and so Volodymyr Zelensky hopes this will make his country safe from any further invasions or encroachments. Yet the role of Europe is still crucial, even if continental leaders’ interest is waning.

Finland, Estonia, and Poland are said to have flatly refused to part with military assets needed to ensure their own security. Even Germany, one of Ukraine’s strongest supporters, appears to be taking a back seat in the plans. Confronted by cold material realities, it looks like countries are more likely to send soldiers and military leaders to train the Ukrainian army, although they would serve far away from any border or ceasefire line. That would still be “fulfilling a commitment to put forces inside the country”, just not in the way Ukraine would have hoped.

Washington’s proposal of officially ceding Crimea to Russia — arguably an extension of the Obama administration’s tacit acceptance of the 2014 occupation and annexation of the peninsula — has received less hostility in European capitals than might have been expected. And, although he partially backtracked on his comments later, during a White House press conference last week Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said the hitherto unsayable words that “both parties” — Russia and Ukraine — “have to deliver” and “feel the pressure” to do so.

Just as the world got tired of Covid-19 and quickly became obsessed with the war in Ukraine, Trump’s tariffs and China’s muscular posture in the Asia-Pacific are now the new focus. Supporting Ukraine “as long as it takes” and “until the end” seems to have been a lie. Støre’s remark that “it is a bad thing for the world to have such a broad conflict” with potential ramifications “far beyond Ukraine” might well have been a trial balloon for a new message from Europe. In that case, Ukraine will once more have been duped by high-minded rhetoric.

For Zelensky, the best chance of securing a stable peace is to fully commit to what Axios has termed the “lasting economic partnership between the US and Ukraine”, represented by the minerals agreement. For while it is true — as historian Niall Ferguson has recently observed, citing the example of the 1990 Iraqi incursion into Kuwait — that the presence of US drillers and engineers has not “deterred an authoritarian regime from invading a neighbour”, America has famously not allowed such aggression to stand. With European minds already moving on to the new geopolitical moment and Ukraine unable to fight Russia alone, Kyiv has no other option.

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Johan Wennström is a Research Fellow at the Swedish Defence University, currently writing a book about Sweden’s stay-behind network during the Cold War.

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