Ukraine is at the most difficult point in its existential war since the full-scale Russian invasion began in February, 2022.
The United States has backed out of the alliance supporting Kyiv, reneging on a multiyear strategic agreement it signed with Ukraine last year.
Ukraine has been in a defensive posture for a year, and Russian attacks on Ukrainian soil are increasing.
Now, the US is forcing Ukraine to negotiate for peace from a position of weakness, while demanding payback for $135.7bn in military and financial aid.
Worse could yet come, warns Phillips O’Brien, head of the School of International Relations at St Andrews University and a leading analyst and commentator on Ukraine. The US could drop its sanctions against Russia and back out of NATO.
Al Jazeera spoke with him about why, despite these gloomy prospects, he believes Europe still has the capacity to keep Ukraine fighting, and could ultimately do much more to determine the outcome of this war – for the sake of its own security.
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Al Jazeera: Can Europe, plus a few other nations like Japan and Australia, save Ukraine from a bad deal with US President Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin?
Phillips O’Brien: They can certainly keep Ukraine in the fight. A lot of it depends on what the US does. We have to be careful about that. If the US actually moves to fully backing Russia and provides Russia with a significant amount of intelligence and support, that will be really a problem for Ukraine and Europe.
But assuming, say, the US just pulls out and washes its hands of it, Europe has the resources to keep Ukraine going. It would require mobilisation, effort, a significant amount of commitment on Europe’s part. So far, they’ve not, I think, shown the united will to do that, but they certainly could do it if they wanted to. They have the money. They have the technological know-how. They even have the military equipment to make a significant difference.
Al Jazeera: So you believe that – intelligence aside – Europe and Ukraine can quite quickly develop the defence industrial base needed?
O’Brien: Ukraine’s already developing a lot of it, so what [Europeans] could do is help supercharge what the Ukrainians are doing in, say, UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] production. The Russian military is not this unstoppable machine. I think we have to realise it is still a deeply flawed institution.
It’s been protected by the US in many ways throughout this war in the way that the US has aided Ukraine not to attack the Russian military machine in Russia, and that’s been a conscious choice of the US. Europe could actually change, if it wanted to, the way it helped Ukraine to free up Ukraine, to provide it more aid to attack Russian production or Russian military facilities in Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he aims to make 30,000 long-range drones this year and 3,000 cruise missiles.
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That would be very impressive if they could get that money up and running, and that would, I think, put Russian logistics and military production under significant pressure.
Al Jazeera: What would be the potential consequences of crossing the United States and Russia if Ukraine and Europe really banded together and did all these things, given what you said before about the US not necessarily remaining a neutral party?
O’Brien: If these tariffs [Trump announced on April 2] come into effect, it’s already going to be an economic war with Europe. One of the things it could fully do – I think in many ways it’s already done it de facto – is to say, ‘The US will have no role defending Europe under NATO Article 5’.
They could basically cut Europe off of the transatlantic alliance. I think the most dangerous thing for Europe in the immediate term is to end the nuclear guarantees, basically saying to Russia, ‘We’re not protecting Europe,’ which means Europe’s nuclear guarantee goes completely down to a very small number of French and British submarines.
Al Jazeera: But Putin has already made nuclear threats. He did it when he dropped the Oreshnik ballistic missile on Dnipro last November …
O’Brien: I don’t think anyone in Europe took [previous threats] seriously as a threat against Europe because of the US nuclear shield.
Al Jazeera: Is there a European deficit in intelligence capabilities?
O’Brien: Basically, much of European intelligence has been integrated with the US, and they had been provided a lot of information from the US, and the US has technological capabilities that they don’t have.
So right away, you’d have to rely on less good, less developed systems.
[Starlink] is just part of it. [There’s] US eyes in the sky, US listening, US intelligence sharing – they do have the kind of surveillance that Europe does not have at this point. It will leave you far worse off immediately, and Europe will have to build up a new system in its place.
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Al Jazeera: Would you, in this scenario of confrontation, expect pushback from within the United States or US forces in Europe?
O’Brien: Congress could try and force back at any time. The issue is the president’s commander-in-chief, and right now, the Republicans have no desire to stand up to him.
Al Jazeera: Why is it important for Europe to make that stand?
O’Brien: Because with the US out of the game, Ukraine becomes incredibly important to the future of European security.
If you take the US out, the state of Ukraine is absolutely, without a doubt, central to European security, because Ukraine is the difference, as Putin understands, between Russia being a threat to the continent or not.
If they can take Ukraine and rebuild in possession of Ukraine’s resources, one assumes subsuming Belarus as well, then they’re in a much better position. Who knows what happens with the populists in France or with the populists in other European countries. It’s a very, very dangerous situation.
Europe is torn between those that want action and those who still can’t believe what they’re looking at. It’s deeply frustrating because you [could see] a year ago that [a Trump presidency] was coming down the pike. There was a significant chance Europe had to plan on the US going home, the US walking back from NATO, and they just didn’t want to do it. There was a wilful inability to plan for a likely event, and that is a failure of leadership of historic proportions.