Why Putin’s ceasefire demands are a test case for Europe’s resolve

Good morning. Yesterday afternoon, as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin were chatting about how fun it would be to arrange US-Russian ice hockey matches, Ursula von der Leyen was proposing that the European Commission buy weapons to help protect the continent from Moscow without Washington’s support. Welcome to the new normal.

Today, I explain the unease in European capitals as they digest the fallout from the Trump-Putin call, and our Netherlands correspondent reports on an intriguing move to merge the country’s Green and socialist parties.

A farewell to arms?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded that western countries stop providing military support to Ukraine under any final ceasefire agreement with Kyiv, after a phone call with US President Donald Trump yesterday that confirmed many of Europe’s fears about the trajectory of Washington’s peace effort.

Context: Trump has demanded a swift end to the more than three-year-long war. The peace talks have not involved European leaders, who are preparing to provide long-term security guarantees to Ukraine — including the continued supply of arms — without US support.

Putin and Trump agreed yesterday to a 30-day halt on attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, falling short of a full 30-day ceasefire to which Kyiv had agreed last week.

Putin’s statement following the call that a full peace deal would require a “total end to foreign military support and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv” sent European officials scrambling to assess whether Trump had tacitly approved that.

European diplomats are deeply concerned that the US-Russia talks are defining the future security architecture of the continent without their participation. Many see Trump’s stance on Ukraine and his willingness to offer Putin concessions as a harbinger for his wider indifference towards Russia’s threat to Europe.

One senior EU diplomat, when asked whether his country would agree to stop peacetime weapons shipments to Ukraine, simply said: “No.”

The partial ceasefire and additional details of Putin’s maximalist demands on Kyiv will shape discussions on future support to Ukraine between the EU’s 27 leaders in Brussels tomorrow.

EU countries have repeatedly vowed to increase their shipments of military aid to Ukraine in order to turn it into a “steel porcupine”, armed to a degree that would deter any future Russian attack. Putin evidently has other plans.

“The first pillar of security guarantees is to have a strong Ukraine able to defend itself. So I don’t see that as being compatible with stopping the support that [EU] member states have been giving to the Ukrainian military,” said a senior EU official yesterday.

Chart du jour: Inferno

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is at its highest level in 800,000 years, according to UN research. It also found that last year was probably the hottest year on record, and the first in which temperatures had risen by more than 1.5C compared with pre-industrial levels. 

Stronger together

The Dutch socialist and Green parties are making moves to merge into a joint new party in a move that could set a precedent for Europe’s embattled leftists, writes Andy Bounds.

Context: Labour and the Green Left already run joint lists in national and most local elections, and sit together in the Dutch parliament. Together they still came second in the national poll in 2023 that brought the far-right Freedom party to power.

Now their executive committees are going one step further, asking members to vote on forming a new political party, which other leftwing forces could join.

“Many Dutch Green, leftwing, progressive, socialist, social-democratic voters are very concerned at what is happening in our country and in the world at the moment and are in favour of joining forces,” Katinka Eikelenboom, president of the Green Left, said yesterday.

The Labour/Green list came second in the election with 25 seats, behind the Freedom party’s 37, which formed a rightwing coalition with three other parties.

Senior Labour party figures have raised objections at ending their historic social democratic party, but others such as former secretary-general Michiel van Hulten backed the move. “There is a nostalgia among the older generation. But a younger generation just wants to be effective and have a clear, progressive voice,” he said.

He expects members of both parties to vote for the move at a joint congress on June 21.

Van Hulten also said the move could be replicated in the European parliament, where the Greens slumped to fifth place in elections in 2024, behind the far-right Patriots and the European Conservatives and Reformists.

What to watch today

1. EU Council president António Costa, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and UN secretary-general António Guterres meet for dinner.

2. Tripartite social summit between EU institutions, businesses and trade unions.

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