The End of the Conflict in Ukraine at Sight?
Zelensky and the Europeans in Washington in Search of Saving Face
By Ricardo Martins – New Eastern Outlook – August 25, 2025
Seven European leaders rushed to Washington under the official banner of solidarity with Volodymyr Zelensky. Yet, the real motive was less about unshakable support for Ukraine and more about damage control.
Zelensky and the Europeans in Washington in Search of Saving Face
With negotiations advancing — and with Ukraine’s loss of territories and NATO membership already ruled out by Donald Trump — Europe’s leaders were scrambling to craft a narrative to their domestic audience that could justify defeat without admitting failure.
The Struggle to Save Face
For three years, the European mantra has been that “Russia cannot win.” Yet on the battlefield, it is Moscow that has the upper hand. The tactic, therefore, was to insist that Russia, as the supposed aggressor, must accept the obligations of the loser. But the reality is moving in the opposite direction: Europe now seeks symbolic concessions to sell to its public.
One of these face-saving gestures is the return of “kidnapped” Ukrainian children, based on contested numbers but useful as a talking point. Another is security guarantees for Ukraine — not NATO membership, but something that can be framed as protection. Zelensky, keen to please Trump, asked for $100 billion in arms, to be funded by Europeans but manufactured in the U.S. NATO’s Secretary-General eagerly echoed this line, presenting himself as a loyal messenger to “Daddy” Trump at Europe’s expense.
Meanwhile, territorial concessions remain taboo in European discourse. To admit them would be to acknowledge Putin’s victory, a political sin for leaders who have invested heavily in a narrative of inevitable Ukrainian triumph.
The Casting: Putin Absent, Yet Present
The most striking absence in Washington was also the most palpable presence. Putin was not in the room, but Trump invoked his name repeatedly, even phoning him for 40 minutes while Europe’s leaders waited. Each mention of Putin’s name drew visible discomfort across European faces, an unmistakable reminder of their diplomatic impotence.
As Djoomart Otorbaev, former Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan, put it: “Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Putin didn’t earn Trump’s respect through backroom schemes. He earned it on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. And that reality says more about today’s shifting world order than any rumour.”
Trump’s deference to Putin was not ideological; it was grounded in recognition of Russia’s gains. Western efforts to reverse the war’s trajectory have not succeeded, despite supplying Ukraine with advanced weaponry.
Europe’s Century of Humiliation Has Started
Europe’s frantic arrival in Washington — “like the Middle Ages, to homage their master” — symbolised a humiliating dependency: the continent’s leaders reduced to courtiers around a U.S. president already imagining his Nobel Peace Prize.
The delegation was a tableau of weakness. Ursula von der Leyen, in the name of the European Commission, reconfirmed the one-sided trade arrangements: 15% tariffs on European goods entering the U.S., zero tariffs on U.S. exports to Europe, $750 billion in energy and arms purchases, $600 billion in European investments in the U.S., and €150 billion earmarked for EU rearmament. A transfer of wealth and sovereignty dressed up as transatlantic unity.
The body language told its own story. Giorgia Meloni’s irritation was poorly disguised; Friedrich Merz remained wooden; Emmanuel Macron projected disdain; Keir Starmer hid behind note-taking. Von der Leyen managed only a strained smile, Mark Rutte melted into insignificance, and Zelensky — who should have been the central figure — appeared isolated at the margin, dignified but sidelined. Putin, a former KGB officer, and Trump, a former reality TV star and a real estate millionaire, both despised by the Europeans, loomed as the peace brokers. As put by a French analyst: “Quel cirque”.
The Security Guarantees Conundrum
The question of security guarantees has become the crux of European debate. Openly, leaders say territorial concessions are for Ukrainians to decide. Privately, they know the map is already shifting. What remains is an attempt to provide Ukraine with protections that appear credible, but that does not include NATO membership.
POLITICO reported that the Pentagon’s top policy official made clear the U.S. intends to play only a minimal role in guarantees. “There’s the dawning reality that this will be Europe making this happen on the ground,” admitted a NATO diplomat. In other words, Europe is on its own.
European capitals, however, still plead for U.S. assets: fighter jets stationed in Romania, access to American satellites for GPS and reconnaissance. Russia, through its envoy Mikhail Ulyanov, flatly rejected any foreign troops in Ukraine, while Sergey Lavrov dismissed Western security schemes without Moscow and Beijing as “a road to nowhere.”
Ukraine itself is unimpressed. Ten nations, including France and the U.K., have floated the idea of deploying troops, but Kiev sees such proposals as vague, amorphous, and unlikely to provide real guarantees. Former foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba captured the mood: “The so-called security guarantees are so amorphous. The only news is that the U.S. is willing to take part.”
Europe’s Internal Fractures
Even as leaders paraded unity in Washington, Europe’s internal divisions deepened. The European Parliament announced it would sue the Council over being excluded from negotiations on the €150 billion SAFE defence loan scheme.
In a telling sign of institutional fragility, Parliament was sidelined by Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission in the rush to fund rearmament. As Euractiv reported, 18 member states have already expressed interest in loans totalling €127 billion, but without parliamentary oversight, Europe’s democratic deficit widens.
In sum, the “road to nowhere” that Lavrov mocked may yet prove prophetic, not only for Ukraine’s elusive guarantees but for Europe’s strategic autonomy itself.
Ricardo Martins, PhD in Sociology, specializing in International Relations and Geopolitics
Indian FM pushes back on US pressure, stands by Russian oil imports
Press TV – August 24, 2025
Indian Foreign Minister has defended New Delhi’s continued imports of Russian oil despite US tariffs on Indian goods, saying that if others “don’t like it, don’t buy it.”
Speaking at the Economic Times World Leaders Forum (ET WLF) on Saturday, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said there are some “red lines” in the India-US trade deal negotiations.
He underscored that amid strained relations with the US over several aspects in bilateral trade, India refuses any concession to US President Donald Trump.
“It is funny to have people who work for a pro-business American administration accusing other people of doing business,” he said.
“If you have a problem buying oil or refined products from India, do not buy it. Nobody forces you to buy it. Europe buys, America buys, so you do not like it, do not buy it,” he added.
He asserted that India’s purchase of Russian oil serves both its national interest and contributes to global market stability.
He reiterated that New Delhi would continue to make decisions independently.
The US imposed punitive tariffs on India after Trump claimed that the country’s purchase of Russian crude indirectly funded the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Tensions in US-India trade relations extend beyond energy, with multiple rounds of negotiations for an interim trade agreement failing to produce a breakthrough.
“Where we are concerned, the red lines are primarily the interests of our farmers and, to some extent, of our small producers,” Jaishankar said.
The United States has pressed India to open its markets to American dairy, poultry, and agricultural products such as corn, soybeans, wheat, ethanol, fruits, and nuts.
But India, an agrarian economy, has resisted, particularly on genetically modified (GM) crops, which it considers harmful to human health and the environment.
Dairy remains a particularly sensitive issue as well, as millions of small and landless farmers depend on the sector for survival, especially during poor monsoons or agricultural downturns.
In a clear message to Trump, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has publicly declared that India will not compromise on the interests of farmers.
“Modi is standing like a wall against any harmful policy related to farmers, fishermen, and cattle rearers of India,” he said in his Independence Day speech.
Top CIA analyst behind Russiagate loses her job – Economist
RT | August 22, 2025
One of the CIA’s most senior Russia analysts has lost her job during President Donald Trump’s campaign to depoliticize the intelligence services, The Economist reported on Thursday.
The officer, whose identity was not disclosed, oversaw the drafting of a report accusing Russia of interfering in the 2016 US presidential election in favor of Trump.
The Economist described her as “the country’s top intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia,” who coordinated operations related to the former Soviet Union. According to the outlet, her security clearance was revoked on August 19, along with those of 36 other current and former officials.
The Kremlin denied the allegations of election meddling, while Trump and the Republicans denounced them as a “hoax” by former President Barack Obama and the Democrats to delegitimize Trump’s first election victory and undermine his presidency.
Since mid-July, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has released multiple documents that she claims expose a coordinated effort by senior Obama-era officials to falsely accuse Trump of colluding with Russia.
Earlier this week, Gabbard announced that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees 18 agencies, will be reduced by nearly 50%. The US intelligence community has become “plagued with unauthorized intelligence leaks, politicization, and weaponization of intelligence,” she said.
Gabbard also said the Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC), created by Congress in the wake of the Russiagate allegations, will be significantly scaled back and stripped of some of its core functions.
End of the Line for Diplomacy with Ukraine – John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen
The Duran | August 21, 2025
‘Killing Russians’ a reason to join NATO – Ukrainian diplomat
By Lucas Leiroz | August 21, 2025
Apparently, the Ukrainian army’s only “ability” is to “kill,” without any relevant tactical or strategic planning. In a recent statement, the Ukrainian ambassador to Poland, Vasily Bodnar, stated that Kiev should be granted NATO access due to its alleged capability to eliminate Russians, which shows how desperate Ukrainian authorities are and how they lack any convincing arguments to justify NATO access.
Bodnar stated during an interview with local media in Poland that Ukraine’s ability to “kill Russians” should be considered enough to give the country the right to join NATO. He believes that if the Atlantic alliance eventually goes to war with Russia in the near future, it will need Ukraine’s killing ability to protect itself from Moscow’s forces.
More than that, the ambassador made it clear that Ukraine has greater military capability than all NATO countries when it comes to fighting Russian troops. He believes that his country’s experience would be crucial in providing NATO with the combat know-how necessary to prevent defeat, which also demonstrates, in addition to strategic military ignorance, the arrogance of the Ukrainian authorities.
“If Russia attacks NATO countries tomorrow without Ukraine on NATO’s side, it would be much more difficult than with Ukraine. That’s why Ukraine should be seen as an added value to NATO: it is fighting and knows how to kill Russians, whereas you do not yet,” he said.
The Ukrainian ambassador’s attitude reveals true desperation. He is using completely unfounded arguments to advocate for his country’s entry into the Western alliance. Talking about simply “killing” is pointless from a military perspective. Fighting a war involves factors far more complex than simply physically eliminating opposing soldiers—and the reality of the battlefield shows that perhaps the Ukrainians don’t have much to teach NATO.
“Killing” is not a specific military skill. Obviously, in the context of tactical moves on the battlefield, it is necessary to use available military means to physically eliminate opposing soldiers, thus allowing the advance of troops and territorial control. However, this is not a major military issue. The quality of a country’s armed forces is assessed according to their ability to carry out concrete military actions, not simply by the elimination of enemy soldiers—which is a basic skill that every army is supposed to be capable of.
However, even considering only the isolated number of battlefield deaths, Ukraine doesn’t seem to be in a position to teach anything. In the current conflict with Russia, Ukrainian casualties are reaching high, concerning levels. Recently leaked data shows that the country already has around 1.7 million casualties, including dead, disappeared and seriously wounded. In recent exchanges of bodies, the numbers show a ratio of a few dozen Russian soldiers to every thousand Ukrainian soldiers. In practice, Ukrainians are dying more than they are killing in the current war.
It seems that Ukrainian authorities no longer know what to do to make the country appear “interesting” to NATO partners. With an almost completely destroyed army, an infrastructure worn down by three years of war, and exhausted industrial and economic capabilities, Ukraine definitely doesn’t sound like an interesting candidate for the Atlantic alliance. This is combined with the fact that the country is already at war, which in itself makes joining the military bloc impossible, as it would automatically force all other members to go to war with Russia.
In all recent meetings of Western leaders, including the summit between Trump, Zelensky, and European leaders in Washington, it has been made clear that Ukrainian NATO membership is not a viable issue. There is simply no place for Ukraine in any Western-led military alliance.
Thus, with no arguments left to try to convince their Western partners, Ukrainian officials have resorted to pointless and desperate arguments, such as this one about “killing Russians.” Instead, the right thing to do would be to stop the anti-Russian warmongering rhetoric and try to reverse the regime’s previous mistake of agreeing to serve as a NATO proxy. Unable to join the bloc, the regime now has the opportunity to decide to no longer follow the alliance’s guidelines against Russia, which would allow for a quick capitulation and the achievement of peace.
Unfortunately, the Ukrainian ambassador’s words reflect the mentality of the regime’s authorities, who are not interested in peace, but in continuing to serve the interests of an alliance that is not even willing to accept Ukraine as a member.
Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Associations, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.
You can follow Lucas on X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram.
Jurij Kofner: Europe Enters Century of Humiliation?
Glenn Diesen | August 20, 2025
Jurij Kofner is an economist and an economic policy advisor to AfD. Kofner discusses the de-industrialisation and economic decline in Germany, and the wider socio-economic and political challenges that continue to threaten the relevance of Europe.
Russia had no preference in 2016 US election – Gabbard
RT | August 20, 2025
Russia did not favor Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton ahead of the 2016 US presidential election and the administration of then-President Barack Obama was well aware of that, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard has said.
Since mid-July, Gabbard has released multiple documents which allegedly expose a coordinated effort by senior Obama-era officials to falsely accuse Trump of colluding with Russia and delegitimize his first election win.
During an appearance on the Hannity program on Fox News on Tuesday, Gabbard insisted that “the intelligence community assessed in the months leading up to that 2016 election that, yes, Russia was trying to interfere in our election by sowing discord and chaos, but stating over and over again that Russia did not appear to have any preference for one candidate over the other.”
At the time, Moscow viewed both Trump and Clinton “as equally bad for Russia’s interest,” she said.
“The big shift – that happened around what is now commonly known as ‘Russiagate’ – was after the election,” Gabbard claimed.
In early December 2016, Obama called a meeting of his national security council leadership, telling then-DNI James Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan to come up with a new “politicized and weaponized fake intelligence” assessment, claiming that “Russia, [President Vladimir] Putin did try to interfere in the election because he wanted Trump to win,” she alleged.
Russiagate was the “real crime” by Obama officials against the American people because it undermined their votes, Gabbard stressed.
Earlier on Tuesday, Gabbard announced that her office had stripped security clearances from 37 current and former US intelligence officials, including Clapper, for allegedly politicizing and manipulating intelligence.
Trump said earlier that all those behind the Russiagate hoax should pay a “big price” for what he labeled a deliberate attempt to sabotage his presidency.
Moscow has consistently denied any interference in the 2016 election, with Russian officials calling the US accusations a product of partisan infighting. The Russiagate scandal severely strained US-Russia relations, resulting in sanctions, asset seizures, and a breakdown in diplomatic engagement.
Trump Holds Firm Peace Deal with Putin Despite European Pushback
Sputnik – 19.08.2025
European leaders and Zelensky didn’t succeed in changing Trump’s peace proposal, which the US president had reached with Putin, former defense politician and chief of staff with the Sweden Democrats Mikael Valtersson told Sputnik.
“The ball is now clearly in Ukrainian and, to a lesser degree, European hands. A strong and clear ‘no’ from the European side might result in broken relations between the US and Europe/Ukraine. Therefore we can expect a ‘maybe’ from the European/Ukrainian side,” he said.
However, Valtersson also notes that playing for time may be part of Zelensky’s strategy, hoping that eventually, a shift in the geopolitical landscape might restore the hardline anti-Russian alliance. This strategy, though, is likely a “lost cause,” according to the former Swedish defense expert. By dragging out the negotiations, Zelensky and his allies risk further territorial losses to Russia and an increase in war casualties.
“If the European leaders really cared for Ukraine, they would pressure Zelensky to accept a peace deal that includes swapping of territories. This would minimize Ukrainian territorial and human losses,” Valtersson argues.
Yet, the expert predicts that European obstruction of a peace deal will continue, driven by the hope that a miraculous turn of events will “rescue” Ukraine. This approach could extend negotiations for weeks, but ultimately, he believes Trump’s patience will wear thin, forcing a clear decision.
In the meantime, the peace process is largely aligning with Russia’s expectations, with Trump holding firm to the terms agreed with Putin in Alaska.
Michael von der Schulenburg: Alaska Meeting Was a “Game Changer”
Glenn Diesen | August 16, 2025
Michael von der Schulenburg is a German member of the EU Parliament who was previously a UN diplomat for 34 years in positions that included Assistant Secretary General of the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs. Schulenburg explains why he thinks the Alaska meeting was a game changer.
Ridiculous Europe
By Ted Snider | The Libertarian Institute | August 18, 2025
By President Donald Trump’s transactional criterion, NATO has been a costly failure that needs fixing or needs to be cut lose. Europe has failed to pay the price and has left the United States with the financial and military burden of defending Europe. The war in Ukraine has proven the point.
But that was never the point of NATO. The point of NATO was never economic nor transactional. The point of NATO was, in large part, to keep Europe militarily coordinated with, dependent on and subordinate to the United States. The point wasn’t to extricate the U.S. from Europe, it was, as Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General of NATO explained, precisely “to keep the Americans in Europe,” while keeping the Russians out.” By that criterion, NATO has been a massive success. The Ukraine war has proven that point too.
While it continues, with a loud voice, to make demands regarding the defense of Ukraine and the terms for ending the war, Europe has revealed to the world that it is unable to mount that defense without the U.S. and that it has been sidelined in the negotiations, leaving decisions about Europe to the Americans.
Europe is unable to supply Ukraine with the weapons it requires and that Europe insists Ukraine must receive. The United States has reiterated that it will no longer be the font from which Ukraine’s weapons flow. On August 10, Vice President J.D. Vance said clearly again that the U.S. is “done with the funding of the Ukraine war business.” Europe does not have the stockpile to spare nor the capacity to manufacture a fraction of the weapons Ukraine needs. And though Europe has, by necessity, accepted the American plan that Europe can send U.S. weapons to Ukraine if they pay for them, that will not provide Ukraine with even close to the amount of weapons the U.S. was supplying. And even that was not enough.
Not only can Europe not supply the weapons, they cannot supply the troops. Europe has, to its embarrassment, publicly conceded that it cannot mount the number of troops needed to send to Ukraine as peacekeepers after a ceasefire.
The war in Ukraine has exposed Europe’s dependence on the United States. Europe can neither provide the weapons nor the troops to defend itself. Europe has been revealed as dependent on, and subordinate to, the United States.
Ukraine is now facing a crisis on the battlefield. Russia’s military efforts were long dismissed as not rapidly gaining ground. But keeping the media focus on that criterion kept the public in the dark about the real criterion. Russia’s war of attrition was devouring and exhausting Ukraine’s weapons and, more importantly, manpower. The shrinking Ukrainian armed forces is running out of weapons to defend itself against the massive and still growing Russian army. There are not enough soldiers to fill the front line. That leaves gaps in the line. As Ukraine moves troops from other places to fill those gaps, it leaves even bigger gaps in those places. Russia’s war of attrition was setting up this moment. And now, Russian troops are breaking through those gaps in the lines.
For the first time in the war, the Russian armed forces have broken through key defensive lines and their rapid move west is now measured in miles and not inches. Logistical hubs critical for the Ukrainian armed forces to supply their troops in the east have been partially infiltrated and surrounded. Russian positions are being consolidated and roads that are lifelines to Ukrainian soldiers have been partially cut. There is also reliable reporting from both Russian and Ukrainian sources that the rapid advance has brought the Russian army all the way to the heavily fortified second Donbas fortification line, which they have now breached. Beyond that defensive line is largely open fields with no organized line of defense. The Russian armed forces may then be free to rapidly advance, making the Russian goal of control of the entire Donbas a real possibility. For the first time in the war, the Ukrainian armed forces face the very real possibility of collapse.
Geoffrey Robers, professor emeritus of history at University College Cork, told me, “All the signs point to a significant Russian breakthrough north of Pokrovsk. The Ukrainians may be able to stem the Russian advance but I doubt they will be able to throw it back, at least not without fatally weakening their already crumbling defensive lines in other sectors of the front.” Alexander Hill, professor of military history at the University of Calgary, told me that “regardless of how one might categorise this most recent Russian breakthrough, the reality is quite clearly that the rate of Russian advance has sped up recently and Ukrainian forces are having increasing difficulty in plugging gaps in their line.” Roberts says that “if Putin doesn’t obtain the rest of the Donbass through a deal with Trump, he will certainly secure it by military means, in months, if not weeks.”
But, despite this threatening reality, Europe is pleading for the war to go on. While Trump pushes for a diplomatic end to the war, Europe continues to push for an unreachable dream of a military solution. They insist on supporting Ukraine in its aspiration of goals that were already unrealistic over a decade ago. They continue to push for an open door to Ukrainian NATO membership even though Russian President Vladimir Putin went to war to prevent that—and will not stop the war without preventing that—Trump has vetoed it and even Europe has been reluctant to grant it. Putin made it clear on the threshold of the war, that that is what he went to war to prevent. Even NATO has acknowledged that. That goal was unrealist before the war, and it is even more out of reach with Russia winning the war.
The goal of reincorporating Crimea has been unaligned with reality, since 2014, when a referendum and the reincorporating of Crimea into Russia was already a reality. The idea of a Donbas that is at least semiautonomous has been unrealistic since the conception of the Minsk Accords. That idea became more unrealistic with the mounting assaults on Donbas prior to the war and the attacks on the rights of ethnic Russians in Donbas that began in 2014 and have grown worse since the start of the war.
As the Ukrainian armed forces face collapse and defeat, Europe continues to push for a continuation of the war that they cannot help. The War in Ukraine has exposed, not only Europe’s helplessness and dependence, it has revealed its ridiculousness.
Trump’s make or break moment after the Alaska summit
By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – August 18, 2025
While Western media fixated on optics and diplomatic jabs, the Alaska summit quietly marked a turning point that shifted the conversation from temporary ceasefires to the possibility of lasting peace.
This moment demands clarity from Donald Trump: will he commit to a peace-first strategy or allow his European allies to drag the US deeper into costly, unwinnable conflicts?
The Summit
In the lead-up to the Alaska summit, Washington’s playbook was predictable: press Moscow for a ceasefire. President Donald Trump echoed what had become NATO’s default position. In a videoconference just 48 hours before the summit, European leaders and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky aligned on ceasefire being the top priority.
But ceasefires are rarely solutions. They’re political sedatives—short-term fixes that freeze conflicts without resolving them. Therefore, at the Alaska summit, Russia’s Vladimir Putin flipped the script. Rather than another temporary pause, he proposed a permanent peace framework that could involve a security pact involving mutual guarantees from the US and Russia, limits on NATO expansion, and a demilitarized buffer that includes Ukraine. It was the clearest signal yet that Moscow wasn’t angling for a breather; it wanted a structural reset.
Most importantly, the US President was able to see merit in this framework. In social media post, Trump said,
“A great and very successful day in Alaska! The meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia went very well, as did a late-night phone call with [Ukrainian] President Zelensky of Ukraine, and various European Leaders, including the highly respected Secretary General of NATO. It was determined by all that the best way [was] to go directly to a peace agreement … and not a mere ceasefire agreement, which often does not hold up.”
For the Europeans, this is not only a shocking development but also a glaring indication that they do not and cannot control the peace process in the sense that they can unilaterally dictate its terms. Therefore, they are already raising so-called “questions” about whether even the peace agreement will hold or not, or whether Russia can be trusted or not, or whether they can normalize their ties with Russia or not, or whether it is serious about peace. These questions are little more than attempts to throw wrenches into what probably is the best opportunity to bring peace to Europe.
Donald Trump faces a choice
Though he publicly aligned with Vladimir Putin on the need for a permanent peace agreement, President Donald Trump now faces intense resistance from a familiar front: hawkish European leaders who would rather prolong the war—and pull Washington deeper into it—than confront the core issue driving the conflict.
The choice before Trump is stark. He can either listen to Europe’s war camp or to Moscow’s push for a comprehensive peace deal. If he sticks with the narrow, short-term goal of a ceasefire while ignoring Russia’s central demand—ending NATO’s eastward expansion—he risks dragging the US into a grinding geopolitical entanglement. Worse, he’ll be walking away from one of his signature campaign promises: to end America’s endless wars and ‘Make America Great Again’.
Rejecting Russia’s terms outright won’t come without consequences. It would require doubling down on the existing strategy: ramping up sanctions, sending more weapons to Ukraine, and locking the US into a long-term conflict with no clear off-ramp. Such a move would not only escalate tensions with Moscow but also push Russia and its allies, such as China, to further reinforce the politics of creating a new, alternative global order. The idea of a parallel world order—already gathering momentum—would gain new political urgency and legitimacy. Trump has already clashed with BRICS members like India through trade wars and punitive rhetoric. A wider conflict could force him into even more confrontations on multiple fronts.
But there is another path—one that reverses the pressure. Instead of bowing to European hawks, Trump could put the heat on them. If Europe refuses to address the root causes of the war, the US could begin scaling back military support for NATO and Ukraine. Let Brussels handle the fallout. Such a move would send a clear message: if Europe wants perpetual conflict, it can fight it alone. (In fact, Donald Trump did give such statements during his election campaign.) And European leaders would know the likely outcome, that is, without US backing, Ukraine risks losing even more territory to Russia, with little chance of recovery.
As such, this is Trump’s moment of reckoning. He can choose to steer the US toward a long-overdue peace, or sleepwalk into another forever war, one that reshapes the global order and leaves America footing the bill.
Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.
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A decade of lies: The US-funded biolab denial saga
RT | May 15, 2026
Russia’s allegations that the US funded clandestine biological laboratories near its borders – claims denied until recently by Washington – have remained a persistent flashpoint in the steadily deteriorating relationship between Russia and the West for nearly a decade.
The biolabs affair was revealed in a 2017 exposé by RT that questioned a shady US military tender seeking the genetic material of living Russians. Over the years, Moscow has raised allegations against Washington of conducting clandestine bio-research, including potential WMD development and illicit human testing, in a network of labs located across multiple nations, the bulk of which operated in Ukraine. The claims were met with a blanket denial in the West, which repeatedly dismissed them as “Russian propaganda.”
This abruptly changed the past week when US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said that her department had identified more than 120 US-funded biological laboratories in 30 countries, with over a third of them located in Ukraine. The agency is now working to “identify where these labs are, what pathogens they contain, and what ‘research’ is being conducted to end dangerous gain-of-function research that threatens the health and wellbeing of the American people and the world,” according to Gabbard.
RT looks back at the timeline of the biolabs saga and the US denial of its existence until now. … continue
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