Trump Leaves Ukraine’s Future to Europe

Of the many standing ovations King Charles III received in Congress last week, few were more surprising than the response to his comments about the war in Ukraine. Britain and the United States have stood “shoulder to shoulder” for centuries, he declared, through two world wars, the Cold War, 9-11, and Afghanistan. “Today … that same, unyielding resolve is needed for the defense of Ukraine”—and with that, more than 400 U.S. Senators and Representatives, Democrats and Republicans, leapt to their feet in applause. 

But President Donald Trump is determined to go his own way despite the consensus, and there were more signs last week that the U.S. has washed its hands of Kyiv’s four-year-old conflict with Moscow.  

First, America’s acting ambassador in Kyiv resigned—the second envoy to quit in just 12 months—citing Washington’s dwindling support for its one-time ally. Then Trump had another friendly 90-minute phone call with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. Apparently forgetting that Moscow has been supplying Iran with intelligence about American targets in the Persian Gulf, the 47th president once again underlined their long friendship and praised the dictator for what Trump sees as his willingness to agree to a Ukraine ceasefire. Speaking later from the Oval Office, Trump reminded reporters that the United States is no longer giving Kyiv American weapons or ammunition, and he dumped responsibility for Ukraine’s future in Europe’s lap.  

“We helped [Europe] with Ukraine, and they made a mess [of it],” the president maintained, twisting the historical record to serve his grudge of the moment. “Ukraine has nothing to do with [us]. We’re an ocean apart. It has to do with them.” 

The good news for Ukraine: Europe is stepping up. Last month’s Hungarian elections, which drummed former prime minister Viktor Orban out of office, opened the door to renewed European support for Kyiv. It took less than two weeks for the European Union to impose new economic sanctions on Russia and approve a €90 billion loan to cover two-thirds of Ukraine’s core financial needs over the next two years—both steps long blocked by the deposed Hungarian leader. Also critical for Kyiv, Orban’s departure cleared the way for Ukraine to resume its march toward EU membership.  

All this will be harder without the United States. The larger the club enforcing economic sanctions, the more effective they are, and it looks increasingly likely that the new European loan will fall billions short of Ukraine’s growing budget needs. America’s voice will be missed even in the conversation about admitting Ukraine to the EU. Former U.S. ambassador Bridget Brink, among others, played an essential role before she resigned in April 2025, pressing the West to balance support for Kyiv with demands for reform to meet Western standards for democratic governance and the rule of law.  

Europeans see support for Ukraine as an existential imperative—an essential defense against an expanded Russian war of aggression—and they will push ahead alone. But challenges loom. 

Now, with Orban gone, the difficulty of striking a balance between support and tough-love reform requirements is coming back into view, along with a troubling gap between European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.  

Virtually no European leader questions whether Kyiv should be admitted to the EU. What’s at issue is when and how. Should the normal accession process, which takes on average nine years and in some cases considerably longer, be accelerated for Ukraine? 

In late 2025, EU leadership proposed what it called “reverse enlargement.” Ukraine would formally join the bloc before the end of 2027—part of a ceasefire deal proposed by the Trump administration. But the practical benefits of membership, including voting rights and the substantial subsidies provided by the union’s Common Agricultural Policy and Cohesion Fund, would not take effect until Kyiv met Brussels’ usual extensive reform requirements.  

This first attempt to rebalance rights and responsibilities went too far for most EU member states, and both Berlin and Paris have recently proposed slower, more demanding road maps, starting with what one leaked German document called “symbolic membership.” Zelensky’s barbed response, delivered in the media in late April: “Ukraine does not need symbolic membership in the EU. Ukraine is … not defending Europe symbolically—people are really dying.”  

Zelensky wants recognition of Ukraine’s wartime courage and resilience. Brussels refuses to relax the exacting standards of its “merit-based” accession process. But rhetoric aside, this isn’t—or shouldn’t be—an either-or choice.  

Not all Ukrainians agree with Kyiv’s reported refusal to engage in talks about a middle way, and most hesitant European leaders aren’t acting out of stinginess or hostility toward Ukraine. On the contrary, both Europe and Ukraine will lose if Kyiv enters the bloc without meeting Western political and economic standards. 

Ukrainians’ hunger to join the EU dates back over a decade. Thousands of protesters poured into the streets of Kyiv and other cities in late 2013 when pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych declined to sign an agreement that would advance Ukraine’s membership process. These first “Euromaidan” demonstrators, who carried EU flags and chanted “Ukraine is Europe,” were soon joined by more than a million others whose demands far outstripped formal EU integration. To them, “Europe” was shorthand for a long list of Western ideals: replacing corruption, oligarchy, and Soviet-style authoritarianism with democratic capitalism.  

Eight years later, in 2022, Ukrainians again set their sights on Europe, formally applying for EU membership just four days after the Russian invasion, before most newly enlisted soldiers had been issued rifles. Today, according to a 2025 poll, 86 percent of Ukrainians support joining the union, 15 percentage points more than want to join NATO, the same survey shows. And no wonder—EU accession goes to the core of what the war is all about. 

What these millions of Ukrainians want is not just the trappings of integration, the right to call themselves European or travel freely to Paris and Berlin. They watched membership transform nearby countries from Bulgaria to the Baltics, as Brussels demanded democratic reforms in return for investment. And like their neighbors, Ukrainians see accession as an engine of change that will bring both prosperity and democratic freedoms.  

Ukrainians understand that their country has homework to do—rooting out corruption, curtailing authoritarian government, strengthening democratic institutions, and aligning Ukrainian businesses with Western investment standards—and they fear that a shortcut to membership will short-circuit these reforms.  

“External pressure from the EU, the IMF, and other international partners is the only leverage we have,” explains leading civil society activist Olena Halushka, board member of the influential Anti-Corruption Action Centre.  

She and other reformers remember the essential role Brussels played from spring 2022 through the end of 2024, when Ukraine was required to fulfill seven rigorous “conditions” for EU “candidate status”—the opening of substantive negotiations about membership. The conditions were carefully calibrated and precisely worded—just the ammunition civil society needed to continue its struggle with the corrupt old guard still holding on in government.  

Even as fighting spread across Ukraine, the EU kept the pressure on in Kyiv, calling out backsliding and withholding aid until its conditions were met. But now, Halushka and others complain, Brussels is looking the other way as Ukraine’s wartime government attacks anti-corruption institutions and relaxes standards for judges. The Brussels directorate overseeing EU membership “is not doing enough,” Halushka laments. European Commission President Ursula “von der Leyen is not doing enough. They’re focused on geopolitics—on what it will take to win the war—and turning a blind eye.”  

It shouldn’t be beyond Europe—or Europe and Ukraine together—to find a middle way that combines respect and recognition with conditionality. This will take compromises—a flexibility that has been in short supply until now. But there is no alternative. Both sides need Ukrainian accession and must work together to find a way out of the current impasse. 

What’s needed is a break-the-mold, incremental process where the label “EU member” matters less than the practical benefits. The EU cannot and should not waive its merit-based criteria. Before full membership, Kyiv should be required to fulfill all the bloc’s reform requirements, aligning the Ukrainian legal code—criminal statutes, judicial standards, banking regulations, IP protections, pharmaceutical safeguards, environmental law, and more—with EU norms.  

Big-ticket subsidies like cohesion funding and Common Agricultural Policy payouts will have to wait—too many other EU members stand to lose money from sharing this allotted aid with Ukraine. It’s also unclear just how far the process can go while Ukraine is at war. But Brussels can begin to grant Kyiv some financial benefits and access—participation in decision-making bodies if not voting rights—in return for stepwise reform.  

Once this principle—incrementalism and sequenced benefits—has been agreed, there are many ways to proceed. Anti-corruption activist Haluska would like to see a phased approach that starts with what Brussels calls the “fundamentals cluster”—the rule of law, democratic governance, transparent public procurement, and financial controls. Ukraine could earn some of the benefits of membership when reforms are completed, with other, more technical forms of harmonization following more slowly over time.  

German Council on Foreign Relations Associate Fellow Wilfried Jilge prioritizes reforms that spur Ukrainian economic growth—such as strengthening courts with jurisdiction over commercial property. A third approach would focus on what Ukraine can contribute to the EU, including collaborative defense industrial production. Or Brussels could combine elements from all three strategies. 

What can America do to speed up a process that combines timely recognition for Ukraine’s wartime sacrifices with political reforms? We have as much of a stake as Europe has in a democratic, free-market Ukraine anchored in the West and aligned with NATO. But it’s hard to see how we can help if Donald Trump is in the White House, cozying up to Vladimir Putin and dismissing Western ideals.