During the Biden administration, the United States and Europe acted largely in sync on Ukraine policy. Yes, there were disagreements over the types of weapons systems the West should provide to Kyiv, whether Ukraine should be permitted to deploy long-range missiles to strike military targets on the Russian mainland, and how best to implement sanctions. But everybody agreed on the main objective: pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to the point where he viewed a diplomatic solution as preferable to a battlefield one.

That U.S.-European unity is now fraying.

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President Donald Trump is no former President Joe Biden; he doesn’t particularly care about the details of a peace settlement in Ukraine. Instead, he sees the three-year, three-month running war as a waste of U.S. taxpayer money. It’s also clear that he doesn’t have much personal sympathy for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Biden was willing to let Zelensky dictate the pace of talks or even whether talks started at all. In contrast, Trump isn’t willing to wait. He wanted the entire conflict over yesterday. Biden called Putin “a butcher” and a man who should be sitting in the Hague for war crimes; Trump is loath to use any of this language and shows far greater deference toward the Russian leader.

Yes, on the surface, Trump and his European counterparts still want a settlement to the war. In reality, profound disagreements now exist about how tough to be on Putin regarding the diplomatic process. Trump’s frenetic nature doesn’t help matters. Before he spoke to Putin on the phone this Monday, he gamed out what he was going to say to a group of European leaders and signaled that if Putin didn’t agree to a 30-day ceasefire, additional U.S. sanctions would be imposed. That was music to Europe’s ears, as the U.K. and European Union were ready to deploy another sanctions package aimed at Russia’s fleet of sanctions-evading oil tankers.

But then Sunday’s strategy became Monday’s museum piece. Following a two-hour call with Putin, the immediate ceasefire that Trump had demanded had transformed into an agreement to hold immediate negotiations between Russia and Ukraine on a truce. When Trump briefed Zelensky and the Europeans on his conversation with the Russian leader, the room was dumbstruck and confused. Trump’s readout made it sound like progress was made when, in all actuality, the entire affair was just short of a nothingburger. Putin evidently agreed to talk to the Ukrainians about a ceasefire, which is exactly what a low-level Russian delegation was already doing during a negotiating session in Turkey several days earlier. Those talks, not unexpectedly, went nowhere as both sides regurgitated their usual talking points. 

What happens next?

The Europeans are willing to wait for Washington to maintain a sense of unity, but they aren’t going to wait forever. The EU passed a 17th package of sanctions this week and is working on an 18th that could punish international buyers of Russian crude oil. The EU is reportedly also debating a scheme to seize Russian assets stuck in European clearinghouses and send them to Ukraine — a move that would go far above and beyond current EU policy, which transfers only the investment profits generated from those assets instead of seizing the assets themselves. 

Trump, though, obviously isn’t keen on issuing stricter U.S. economic penalties against the Russians. Despite the usual speculation about Trump being hesitant to get on Putin’s bad side, the likely reason for the shift is less sinister: he’s still interested in striking a settlement and believes any sticks thrown at Moscow will only get Putin to back away from diplomacy. This isn’t an unreasonable position to take, even if it’s frustrating to the British, French, Germans, and Poles. Putin has withstood economic and military pressure from Washington for more than three years. He’s still refusing to meet the Ukrainians halfway, instead only recommitting to his maximalist goals.

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To Zelensky, this is a lame excuse and a sign of Trump’s wobbly knees. He argues that Putin’s entire diplomatic strategy is less about coming to a mutually acceptable peace deal and more about delaying talks to give the Russian military more time to gain ground. 

Europe shares this perception. The Trump administration disagrees. Eventually, however, these two belief systems are going to clash in the open, and when they do, none of us should be particularly surprised.