The Trump who appeared more pro-Ukrainian than ever at the recent NATO summit in Ankara has not in the slightest changed his mind about the ‘ideal’ outcome of a war which, just like Putin, he will continue to do everything in his power to ensure it ends in a way that favours the colonial plan to dismantle European political sovereignty – a plan on which the White House and the Kremlin even agree on the finer points.

Quite simply, a year and a half after Trump took office, the situation on the ground rules out the possibility of achieving the US President’s original objective – namely, Ukraine’s swift capitulation – which European financial support, following the end of US aid, has enabled it to strengthen its military capabilities – including its industrial capacity – and to target, as never before, even the deepest Russian rear areas.

The newly elected Trump was bullying Zelensky because he saw him as a loser and thought he could force him to surrender.
Today, Zelensky is in a stronger position and any attempt to blackmail him again would be futile, because as long as the coalition of the willing – the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland, the Baltic states and the Scandinavian countries – holds firm, Ukraine will not be starved into submission.

So Trump might as well make the best of a bad situation and reposition himself, so that – in the run-up to the mid-term elections, and given the Iranian debacle – he isn’t accused of yet another failure. This is something Trump’s narcissism cannot tolerate – his notion of being a winner means siding with whoever is winning, come what may – and the American electorate might finally punish him for it.

The moral of this tale – whose happy ending is only partial and always extremely fragile – is that over the past year and a half a miracle has taken place, one which even those who, with the optimism of the will and the pessimism of reason, have done everything in their power to bring it about or, quite simply, have prayed for it to happen.

A Europe infiltrated by the Kremlin’s ‘little green men’ and their domestic counterparts, and embroiled in a full-blown hybrid civil war – one that could well lead to bloody consequences – has managed to hold out and support the Ukrainian resistance beyond all expectations, both in terms of commitment and results.

Despite a public that had been dumbed down and terrorised by a perfect media storm, orchestrated by the Russian-American architects of chaos, who continued to present the choice between Ukrainian surrender and a European nuclear Armageddon as the only possible alternative, both the European Commission and a great many Member States stood firm, despite being constrained by procedures and formalities designed for peacetime rather than wartime, and have prevented Ukraine’s isolation and, above all, its starvation, thereby bolstering the resistance of what is now, beyond any doubt, Europe’s strongest army and the continent’s main line of defence against Russian aggression.

Nothing is a foregone conclusion, of course, least of all a Ukrainian and European victory in a war which, according to Putin’s plans and Trump’s wishes, was supposed to wipe Ukraine off the map and reduce a Europe divided by a new Yalta to a purely geographical entity, but without any ‘good guys’ left, and divided between the Russian and American empires.
A goal which, in Russia, is rooted in the subconscious of post-Soviet frustration and, in the United States, in the spiritual upheavals of ‘America First’ and the proprietary globalism of Trumpian ideology.

But whilst nothing is a foregone conclusion, nothing is lost either, and this is the real news that Donald Trump had to acknowledge in Ankara and of which the key players must be aware.

Italy, however, cannot claim any credit for this outcome, nor can it take any pride in it.

The government must be given credit for not having automatically aligned Italy with Putin’s camp – that is, for not having actively opposed support for Kyiv – and for having, like Spain, contributed financially to aid for Ukraine purely for the sake of appearances, without loudly distancing itself from the bond of European solidarity.

From 2024 to the present day, however, there has not been a single instance – even before Trump’s election – in which the Meloni government has chosen to stand unequivocally and unreservedly on Ukraine’s side.
On every occasion, the Italian Government has consistently made it clear that it cannot (that is, does not wish to) do or provide anything more than the very little it had provided up to that point, and that it cannot (that is, does not wish to) make any further political, financial or military commitments to Ukraine, neither now nor in the future.

The situation became even more grotesque following Trump’s election, when the Italian Government attempted to square the circle by proposing a de facto extension of Article 5 of the NATO Treaty to Ukraine for a hypothetical post-war scenario (the one the White House was negotiating with Putin, as we know, involving the forced cession of territories occupied and claimed by Russia), whilst declaring that it had no intention whatsoever of honouring it, ruling out any commitment of Italian military resources or personnel to that end.

If, at the start of 2025, all European governments had done what Italy did – and, above all, what it failed to do – we would not be where we are now, but where Trump wanted us to be.

It is therefore wise for the Meloni government to refrain from celebrating someone else’s victory.