Extract from ABC News
Analysis
This state of play comes at a crucial moment in the war in Ukraine. (Reuters: Alina Smutko)
Ukraine is the war that Donald Trump says he would end "on day one" but which even Trump — amid claiming dubious credit for ending other disputes — admits he hasn't ended.
These days he looks for all the world like he's lost interest, and is even bored by the war, given it has not delivered him the quick, if sometimes ephemeral, result he seems to have valued in other interventions.
That no doubt works for Vladimir Putin.
Historian Anne Applebaum told the Financial Times this week "Putin is just waiting for Trump to get bored and do something else".
"I assume that he's thinking he can wait out the US, he can wait out Europe, and if he just sticks to his guns, he'll win the war. I think that's his logic," Applebaum said.
"Putin's goal remains the same as it was at the beginning of the war — to destroy Ukraine as an independent country, to make sure there's a pro-Moscow government there if he can't occupy the whole thing, to prevent Ukraine from having any kind of sovereignty or any kind of foreign policy, and to show Europe that he doesn't care about Europe's rules, and he doesn't care about, you know, the postwar settlement, and that he can defy whatever he wants and get away with that.
"And those goals are really, really important to him."
Historian Anne Applebaum told the Financial Times this week "Putin is just waiting for Trump to get bored and do something else". (Reuters: Sputnik/Alexei Nikolsky/Pool)
A crucial moment in the war
Some analysts believe the sanctions the US has put on Russia's largest oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil are a serious escalation in the potency of sanctions that have been applied.
But for now, the US president seems much more preoccupied with events closer to home, in the Western hemisphere, as he steps up his interventions in Central and Latin America.
This state of play comes at a crucial moment in the war in Ukraine.
The eastern city of Pokrovsk — a major strategic hub in Ukraine's road and rail systems in the Donetsk region — is hovering on the edge of being lost to Russian forces.
Just who controls what in the city is unclear. There are claims — denied — that Ukrainian forces are encircled. Certainly Russian forces seem to control parts of the city.
But if they were to gain total control, it would be the first really significant advance by Russia in the bogged down conflict.
Sadly for Ukraine, and significantly for Europe, the various signs in recent months that European leaders might get there act together to organise some collective action seem to be dissipating. (Reuters: Jaimi Joy)
Europe's support needed
With Trump not engaged, that makes the role of Europe in supporting the Ukrainians more vital than it has ever been.
Sadly for Ukraine, and significantly for Europe, the various signs in recent months that European leaders might get their act together to organise some collective action seem to be dissipating.
Spurred on by alarm about Russia's intentions, and the appearance of Russian drones in Western Europe, the continent might be engaged in a massive re-armament exercise, but moves to fill the void left by the US in the Trump era through the purchase as middle men of US arms for Ukraine, and for financial assistance, seem to be bogged down.
Proposals to use frozen Russian assets to help fund Ukraine have stalled after Belgium got nervous about the legal implications of seizing assets in its financial institutions, and about the impact that might have on the confidence of other major banking customers.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been seeking to join forces with Czechia and Slovakia within the EU. (Reuters: Bernadett Szabo)
The Kiel Institute's tracker of military aid last month reported a sharp decline in July and August, despite the introduction of a NATO initiative to prioritise the beleaguered country's military needs.
And there are internal battles, and changing forces, at work within the European Union which do not bode well for Ukraine.
One of those is the escalation of Hungary's anti-Ukraine position. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been seeking to join forces with Czechia and Slovakia within the EU.
Orban has held out on EU efforts — which must be unanimous — to provide financial aid to Ukraine, to stop it joining the EU, and has continued — if not increased — Hungary's purchases of Russian oil, even as other EU members have cut back.
Trump has some capacity to try to change this when he meets with Orban at the White House on Saturday morning Australian time.
A shift in Europe
But something else has fundamentally changed too. The EU still needs its larger states to drive an agenda.
There has been no bigger champion for the European idea in the past eight years than Emmanuel Macron.
In the early days of his presidency, when his new party had swept away most of the old political establishment on the left and right of French politics, Macron demanded a new foreign affairs and defence white paper be written.
And he gave a (very long) speech at the Sorbonne in Paris where he laid out a vision for a Europe that was economically and strategically strong, and less reliant on the United States.
But his desperately weakened political position at home has seen the French President largely abandon the European field.
In early October, for example, he poured cold water on EU President Ursula von der Leyen's plan for a "drone wall" to help protect Europe from Russia.
"I'm wary of [those kinds of] terms," he told reporters before an EU leaders meeting in Copenhagen.
"In reality, we need to have advanced warning systems to better anticipate threats, we need to deter with European long-range fire capabilities, and we need to have more surface-to-air defence and counter-drone systems," he said.
European leaders now feel a very existential threat from Russia but it seems their own problems at home are constraining them from doing anything about it. (Reuters: Yves Herman)
Politico.eu noted last month that Macron's 2017 call "fell on deaf ears at the time".
"Today, however, the European Commission and leaders across the bloc preach Macron's gospel of "strategic autonomy" as they try to diversify away from China and beef up the continent's military capacities in the face of Russian aggression and American military retrenchment."
France also now seems to be missing in action on the climate issue.
The country's hosting of the Paris climate summit in 2015 set the standards for climate action which countries like the United States are now abandoning.
But the US is hardly alone.
The EU had considerable difficulty coming up with any proposal to take to the climate summit now taking place in the Brazilian city of Belem.
It ended up taking a proposal which was generally seen as watered down — and only after a marathon meeting of ministers and officials — as countries including Poland pushed back on more ambitious plans.
While there is often reporting of the various political permutations going on in Europe — with the rise of the far right in many countries — the realpolitik impact on the decisions being made at the national, and EU, level are not so much in focus.
But despite the fact European leaders now feel a very existential threat from Russia, it seems their own problems at home are increasingly constraining them from doing anything about it.
Laura Tingle is the ABC's Global Affairs Editor.
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