Progress toward peace in Ukraine was unlikely before Trump’s Davos rant. Now it looks all but impossible

Once the bluster and bellicose posturing has cleared, Europe is left with the war of today, not the one that probably won’t happen tomorrow.

US President Donald Trump’s insistence he will not take Greenland by force, and his announcement of a sudden “framework deal,” should dampen fears that a full-scale US invasion and occupation is imminent. But the damage this episode of Europe-bashing and open colonial avarice has done is real and enduring.

There were hopes Davos would bring Trump together with Europe’s key leaders and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky around an $800bn “prosperity” deal for a peacetime Ukraine, and the cementing of US security guarantees for Kyiv. It did not. In a rambling speech that lasted more than an hour, Trump referenced both Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron being in the audience when in fact both had stayed away, believing little progress toward peace was likely.

Is it more disturbing Trump thought Macron was sat before him when he mocked his accent and eyewear, or that the man who calls him “Dear Donald” had gone back to Paris, after a week of acrimony?

Did Trump’s staff not tell him Macron and Zelensky had missed his speech, or did he forget they did?

These are now some of the smaller doubts plaguing the hours ahead in Davos.

Zelensky will have to race from Kyiv if he is to make a Thursday meeting – a lengthy train journey followed by a short flight from southern Poland, a journey that a wartime leader with an energy crisis on his hands and a target on his head should not have to rush.

What will greet Zelensky on arrival is more concerning: a hostile and unpredictable US president who seems to flippantly eviscerate his country’s longest-standing allies, mock their leaders, and then find he has loathing to spare for windmills. Trump repeated his claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted a deal on Ukraine – despite little public evidence to support it – and that Zelensky did too. Steve Witkoff, the presidential envoy to the war, is once again due to meet Putin Thursday, possibly after a Trump and Zelensky meeting in Davos. The mayhem of the past week radically decreases the already slim chance of a genuine peace deal.

In recent months, Zelensky has seen the need to maintain the process of peace – to usher the current set of draft documents along, showing Ukraine is pliant, willing, and keen to find results for Witkoff. The latest version of the deal – laid out in late December – left some key issues unresolved, suggesting any peace would leave the front lines as they are, with any (relatively small) land concessions or swaps put to a referendum in Ukraine. Parts of the Donbass under Ukrainian control might become “special economic zones.” These territorial thorns aside, Zelensky has said a proposed three-way split of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant between the US, Russia and Ukraine remains a big stumbling block.

Any progress in Davos would come against the backdrop of Trump’s weeklong undermining of European sovereignty and the Transatlantic alliance, however quickly this suddenly seemed resolved late Wednesday. In the shouty world of New York business, with mere lawyers at your side, you can ask for a lot in the hope you might get a little. In geopolitics, you can’t, especially when your grandiosity is backed up by the most powerful military in history. Does Trump not expect to be taken seriously? Is he angered when he is not? Or does he hourly vacillate between both positions?

Yet the chaos can work both ways. The deals Trump seeks in Ukraine require Kyiv to trust that its concessions will not leave it exposed in the months ahead. Likewise, Europe needs to feel that its reliance on Washington as a mediator and security guarantor works in its favor. Their options without the United States are bleak and onerous. But Ukraine survived the horrors last year, and its front lines did not crumble. Many of Europe’s leaders did not meet Trump in Davos. Europe’s tolerance is not infinite, Trump has managed to prove. Likewise, Trump’s term in office is not unlimited, and the mid-term elections may slow the White House’s wave of unrestrained omnipotence.

Trump’s America needs allies. At present it is threatening much of the Western hemisphere with military action, while mocking Europe for its criticism and weakness. Moscow is, so far, rebuffing its peace entreaties over Ukraine. China and India are keeping a kind of distance. Make America Great Again is not the same as Make America Great (but) Alone.

Progress toward a Ukraine deal remains possible in Davos. It could easily expose Moscow’s intransigence, when Putin – as most expect – finds the proposal put before him falls short of his maximalist demands. But the alliance around Ukraine has gone through perhaps its most perilous week since the invasion, having just seen the world’s most powerful man seemingly lose his way for seven days, plotting a Greenland takeover of minimal economic and strategic benefit.

Putin will at the very least note Trump’s moral incoherence, inconsistent policy, and gladness to beat up on allies. Yes, Trump could be as rash when it comes to his approach to Moscow. But the Kremlin likely sees opportunity rather than threat in the dust cloud of this president’s wake.