‘The message is clear. Trump and Putin want to destroy Europe’

The message from Moscow has been clear for months: Russia and the US are going to gang up and destroy Europe. Russia’s foreign minister has called Europe the home of all evil in the history of the world. Russian internet memes show US and Russian bayonets stabbing Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission.

Russia’s most famous state propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov, has enthused how excited he is to see Donald Trump committed to “the destruction of the European Union... Here is who the real enemies of America are: satanic Europe and the European Union.”

With Trump last week releasing his “seven-point plan” to bring “peace” to Ukraine, this propaganda looks more real. Much of Trump’s plan reads like a list of Kremlin demands that place little burden on Moscow and all on Kyiv. Russia gets to keep most of the territory it gained. Ukraine can forget about Nato. No security guarantees.

But the plan is not only dismissive of Ukraine’s concerns; across Europe, officials and analysts worry it damages the rest of the bloc too.

Two points stand out in particular. First is the US recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The second is lifting all sanctions on Moscow.

Recognising Crimea means the US no longer supports the inviolability of borders. If you can take it, you own it.

That’s an open invite to invasions across the world – and nuclear proliferation could follow as each nation rushes to arm itself. But the US move is particularly ominous given Trump’s obsession with acquiring Greenland.

“Trump’s pressure on Ukraine to accept Russia’s annexation of Crimea is deeply worrying from both a Danish and a European perspective,” says Jacob Kaarsbo, an analyst who spent 15 years working for Danish intelligence. “Trump doesn’t respect sovereignty and territorial integrity even for treaty allies like Denmark.”

This is how Russian propaganda has seen Trump’s intentions for a while. “I will watch Trump going to war with Europe,” says Solovyov. “It will give me great pleasure. Here is how it will go: the annexation of Greenland, the disintegration of Nato, the destruction of the European Union that Trump will no longer recognise and the economic war between America and Europe.”

The propagandist and his ilk are not fanciful when they claim the Trump administration sees Europe as an economic enemy. When raising tariffs on the EU, Trump claimed the union was created “to screw” the US. American tech tycoons who bankroll Trump are aggrieved at EU tech regulation. Now Trump is threatening to lift all sanctions from on Russia as part of his “peace plan”. This will put the EU, which will maintain sanctions, at direct loggerheads with US economic policy.

The text of the seven-point plan also points to a deeper affinity between Moscow and Mar-a-Lago. It reveals how Trump and Vladimir Putin hold a worldview where “mighty” powers get to carve up the globe at will.

But here Russia and this American administration may be misreading the modern world. We don’t live in the 19th century, where a few superpowers can casually dominate others. We already saw what happened with Trump’s tariff policy.

After trying to browbeat the world by unilaterally announcing high tariffs, Trump had to then beat a hasty retreat as countries refused to kowtow and the markets rebelled.

Now he claims this was his intention all along. He always gives himself the chance to completely reverse his policy if it gets pushback. The same could happen here if European powers play their many cards right. In the forthcoming negotiations, it is now up to Europe to show that it can impose itself.

The message, says Orysia Lutsevych of Chatham House, should be that the current Trump plan is not just bad for Ukraine, it is also terrible for European countries that are still at least formally US allies.

For that, Europe needs to show that it can be taken seriously. The EU and Britain may put aside Brexit-era differences over fishing rights and allow the UK to join EU rearmament programmes. And the message on the economy should be even clearer. Trump needs trade with Europe more than with the pitiful Russian economy.

Last Friday Trump’s envoys were in Moscow again, looking to cut a pact over European heads. Yesterday, European leaders and Volodymyr Zelenskyy were talking to Trump directly minutes before the pope’s funeral at the Vatican. Afterwards, Trump posted on social media that he’s now mulling increasing sanctions on Russia if Putin is just stringing him along. The game is on.

Can European nations impose themselves enough to be at the table with Russia and the US – or are they destined to be served up instead?

Photograph Yevhenii Zavhorodnii/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images