European leaders have redoubled their efforts to prise Donald Trump away from Russia by warning that the US president is being “mocked” by Vladimir Putin, alleging that Moscow is using chemical weapons in Ukraine and demanding that the US restore weapons supplies to Kyiv.
The move came after Ukraine said it had endured the biggest overnight air attack of the entire war, with swarms of 500 drones and missiles intended to overwhelm already stretched air defences.
Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, called for the US to end its suspension of air defence missiles and other weapons – most of which are on standby for delivery to Poland –and derided Trump’s fruitless efforts to secure a ceasefire. “Mr Trump, Putin is mocking your peace efforts,” said the Oxford-educated Sikorski.
In addition, the Dutch and German governments said their intelligence services had evidence of widespread use of chemical choking agents (tear gas) against Ukrainian trenches by Russian troops. These have been used to force soldiers into the open where they could be shot by Putin’s forces.
“This intensification is concerning because it is part of a trend we have been observing for several years now, where Russia’s use of chemical weapons in this war is becoming more normalised, standardised, and widespread,” said the Dutch defence minister Ruben Brekelmans.
With the recent US focus on its attacks on Iran in support of Israel, Russia has been gradually stepping up efforts against Kyiv. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has been warning for weeks that his country faces a critical shortage of defensive weapons, so the announcement that the US is suspending promised weapons such Patriot air defence missiles will inevitably entrench the already strong belief that Trump has taken Putin’s side after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and that the US is no longer a real ally in the defence of Europe.
Pentagon officials suggested the suspension was a “pause” in delivery of Patriots, precision artillery and Hellfire missiles mounted on Ukrainian F-16 aircraft as part of a review of US supplies worldwide.
But the US has not declared a pause in supply to any other nation. Israel is the largest recipient of US military aid by far and has recently enjoyed an uptick in supplies of bombs and missiles even as it stands accused by the United Nations of “ethnic cleansing” and its prime minister has been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.
Trump has been trying to secure a ceasefire in the Ukraine war for months. Despite Kyiv offering a 30-day pause in fighting, Putin has repeatedly made it clear that Russia is not interested while it pursues a summer offensive to carve out the east of Ukraine.
Trump has suggested he is frustrated by Putin, but has threatened Russian president with no definitive sanctions. Kyiv, however, has endured having its intelligence feed from the US blinded during the Russian counter attacks to re-take Kursk, seen military aid suspended, been offered no new promises of support, and forced into a mineral deal that trades future US weapons for mining profits.
In March, Trump said he was very angry and “pissed off” after the Russian president continued to swerve his attempts to get Moscow to agree a ceasefire. The pair spoke again at length on Thursday in what turned out to be, from the Oval Office perspective, another unsatisfactory call.
When asked if he had any success with Putin on Ukraine, Trump was clear: “No, I didn’t make any progress with him today at all… I’m not happy about that. I’m not happy about that”. But again there was still no sign that the US was going to lift its suspension of military aid to Ukraine, let alone increase it to try to force Russia to negotiate a workable ceasefire.
So Russia continues its grinding offensive, claiming this week to have captured all of Luhansk province, which it has already illegally annexed. As a precondition to any ceasefire, Putin has demanded he keep at least Luhansk, Crimea, Kherson, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia provinces.
The US has largely accepted this position as a “given” and further insisted that in any long-term peace deal Ukraine is prevented from joining Nato and will not get security guarantees from the US to defend its future borders.
