They were supposed to be allies. At least that’s the narrative, tinged with propaganda, that dominates the mainstream press. On Sunday, however, Donald Trump appeared very irritated with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Recent negotiations in Saudi Arabia did not yield the results Trump and his team had hoped for. Agreements on an immediate ceasefire, even a partial one, are stalling. Although a ceasefire in the Black Sea had been announced, the Kremlin stated that it would take effect only after certain sanctions affecting its agricultural sector were lifted and after Russian companies were reintegrated into the SWIFT international payments system. Even the ceasefire on energy infrastructure has been violated several times, by both sides.

In this context, Trump threatened Russia with secondary sanctions on its energy sector. This would prevent any company purchasing Russian oil from exporting goods to the United States. This is not the first time Trump has threatened Russia’s hydrocarbon sector, the heart of its economy, which has largely been spared from Western sanctions until now. But these statements reflect Washington’s diminishing patience with Russia.

Indeed, Trump is not seeking to impose a lasting “peace” in Ukraine. Achieving that would require time (which he does not have) and addressing certain internal contradictions within his government and external ones with his European “partners.” His main objective is to end the fighting, however precariously. This is a campaign promise, and Trump wants to cultivate his image as a peacemaker. In other words, for Trump, the outcome of negotiations with Russia is intertwined with domestic political issues. This is why his administration emphasizes an immediate, total truce as a condition for opening negotiations for a more structural peace agreement.

Now, Russia knows it has a slight military advantage at the moment, and it wants to leverage this to extract as many concessions as possible from Ukraine and the United States. Moscow seeks “guarantees,” the same ones Putin demanded before the invasion began: a neutral Ukraine that will not join NATO, a “demilitarized” Ukraine, and no NATO troops in the country. From the perspective of Russian interests, Putin has no incentive to stop the fighting without serious negotiations on these points and without obtaining concrete concessions.

It cannot be ruled out that Moscow may also be willing to make concessions, such as halting its occupation of significant portions of Ukrainian territory. Despite the current situation, and despite Russia’s economic recovery in the face of sanctions, Putin cannot afford to wage an endless war in Ukraine. On the Russian side, there are also domestic political considerations: the Kremlin must offer its population a semblance of victory. From this perspective, it needs these “security guarantees.”

This situation, however, strengthens the most anti-Russia factions within the Republican Party and the Trump administration. Announcements of a rapprochement between Trump and Putin, or even the formation of a new “alliance,” are simplistic interpretations. Yet they also serve the interests of those in Europe advocating for the excessive militarization of the continent. A great deal of mistrust has grown between the two countries. From a geopolitical perspective, although the United States does not consider Ukraine a central aspect of its strategy, the rivalry with Moscow remains significant in various regions worldwide. The ideological similarities between the two presidents are real, but this is far from sufficient to justify a rapprochement of the two states’ strategic interests, let alone an alliance.

In other words, Trump’s main interest in Ukraine is to quickly end the fighting, potentially leaving the Europeans to manage the postwar situation on the ground. This is why he also threatened Zelenskyy, who, according to Trump, is backtracking on the rare earths deal, in which U.S. imperialism would plunder Ukrainian resources.

Another contradiction in Trump’s Ukraine policy lies in Europe. Although the initial North American maneuvers have exposed the weaknesses of European imperialists, Washington cannot entirely forgo EU cooperation to achieve its goals in Ukraine. The European powers are trying, in their own way, to prevail. When Russia demanded the lifting of certain sanctions last week, the Europeans refused and instead threatened to tighten them. In other words, even if the United States wanted to make concessions to Putin, Trump would have had to convince his European “partners.”

This struggle, marked by a series of frictions and contentious negotiations, once again demonstrates the utterly reactionary nature of this war. Putin’s Russia continues to protect the interests of its capitalists by establishing a “buffer zone” on its western border at the expense of the populations of neighboring countries. The United States and European imperialists, in turn, have collaborated for almost three years to wage a proxy war against Russia by hypocritically seizing on the issue of Ukraine’s national self-determination. Now that their alliance is weakened, frictions and contradictions are emerging between them, yet they continue to pursue imperialist and reactionary objectives. Notably absent in this war, which is still far from over, are the interests of the workers and the popular sectors of Ukraine, Russia, and the entire continent.

Originally published in French on March 31 in Revolution Permanente.