The split between Europe and the United States over how to end the war is exposing a new, disorienting reality for an alliance in trouble.
If progress in ending the war in Ukraine requires cohesion between allies, there seems to be little or none for now.
A flurry of diplomatic talks this week did less to advance a truce, let alone a peace, than to illustrate the uneasy discord growing between Europe and the United States.
As they huddled in Paris, European leaders made clear that their priority is a free, democratic and stable Ukraine able to withstand any further Russian aggression. “We must place Ukraine in the strongest position to negotiate a solid and durable peace,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Thursday.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, pursued its rush to end the three-year-old war fast and on favorable economic terms for the United States. Those terms include a revived relationship with Russia and substantial recompense from a Ukraine seen as insufficiently grateful for American support.
As a result, the allies, if they are still that, resembled ships passing in the night, with President Trump on course to reward President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, while Europeans anchored themselves to a refusal to do so.