By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-03-26 22:22:21 | Updated at 2025-04-05 01:44:20
1 week ago
Washington and Moscow differed on several key points about a call last month in which US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, agreed to a limited ceasefire in the war in Ukraine.
But there was one thing their statements about the March 18 conversation had in common: there was no mention of Europe.
A day later, there was just one reference to Europe in the American version of a phone call between Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky – and even then it was only as a supplier of weapons and not a stakeholder.
The exclusions point to the Trump administration’s upending of the White House’s policy towards the war and the Kremlin, which is raising risks for the transatlantic alliance.
The cracks in the relationship between the United States and its closest allies have extended beyond security into a broader range of fields, from America’s reciprocal tariffs on “friends and foes” which kick in next month and the country’s ongoing tit-for-tat trade wars with Canada and the European Union.
Amid those rifts, Trump’s Washington and the rest of the West appeared to retain little common ground. Still, the one thing they can agree on is China and the threat they see it posing to international stability.
That agreement was apparent when the Group of 7 foreign ministers wrapped up their talks in Canada on March 14.
