Trump may halt military aid to Ukraine after berating Zelensky, France presents a Ukraine ceasefire plan, and Bosnia's Serb leader defies courts

February 25-March 3, 2025 in Eastern Europe

Mar 03, 2025

Ukraine’s Zelensky, the UK’s Starmer, and France’s Marcon meeting in London on March 2, 2025 (Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street via Wikimedia Commons)

What You Need To Know:

This roundup combines last week’s top news with important underreported stories

1. After his shouting match with Zelensky, Trump mulled halting military aid to Ukraine as Republicans called on Zelensky to resign

After Trump and US Vice President J.D. Vance’s already infamous humiliation of Zelensky at the White House on Friday, during which Zelensky was berated by the American leaders for supposedly not being thankful enough for US support, Trump suggested he was no longer interested in working with Zelensky on a peace deal, and that the Ukrainian president should “come back when he is ready for peace.” Zelensky left Washington without signing the mineral rights deal he had arrived to sign with Trump, but stated on Sunday he was still ready to approve the document and that communication on the deal was still taking place between the two sides. According to reports however, Trump’s team was preparing to hold a meeting today to discuss potentially freezing military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine in response to Friday’s meeting, including remaining aid previously approved by the Biden administration, and was reportedly even drawing up plans to remove sanctions against Russia. Even as support for Zelensky swelled among both Ukrainians and European leaders over the last few days, Trump’s allies and congressional Republicans called on Zelensky to resign, while statements by Zelensky today that an end to the war in Ukraine was still a long way away prompted more fury from Trump online.

Why it matters: Zelensky’s White House meeting seemed less like a turning point for Ukraine than a final nail in the coffin for any hopes that the Trump administration would in any way be a constructive partner for Ukraine. The US president’s subsequent moves, notably his potential shutdown of any military aid shipments to Ukraine approved by Biden, would be the most serious material consequence for Ukraine so far since Trump’s efforts to broker a ceasefire with Russia began last month. Such a freeze would allow Russian forces to seize additional territory in Ukraine, thus only improving their negotiating position ahead of future summits between Trump and Putin’s teams. Although Zelensky has adopted a conciliatory stance and apparently listened to the urgings of European leaders like Polish President Andrzej Duda to try to return to talks with Trump, his apparent refusal to apologize for the meeting, as the US president is now demanding, may prove to be too much for Trump, leaving the future of the minerals deal very much in question. The implications of Friday’s debacle has potential implications beyond Ukraine too — for my analysis on that, check out my in-depth post from yesterday in case you missed it.

2. Europeans met in London to discuss Ukraine as France proposed a phased, one-month partial ceasefire plan to end the fighting

British PM Keir Starmer hosted leaders from across Europe, along with Canada, at a summit in London meant to assemble a coalition of the willing to establish a deal to end the war in Ukraine that Europeans might then persuade Trump to sign onto. At the meeting, France’s Macron called on NATO states to increase their defense spending to 3% of GDP, as attendees discussed several ceasefire scenarios including one proposed by France that would entail a month-long truce in the air, sea, and energy spheres before it would be extended to ground combat after negotiations. Nevertheless, a key point of such an arrangement would be an American “backstop,” as security guarantees for Ukraine would be understood to be meaningless without it. Starmer added that more countries have agreed to send troops to Ukraine as peacekeepers after an eventual ceasefire, while Poland’s PM Tusk called on more European troops in frontline NATO states that border Russia and Belarus. Lithuania’s foreign minister however protested the notable absence of frontline Baltic states from the summit in London, calling it “a mistake.”

Why it matters: Although Europeans have struggled to do more than hold summits and make statements about the need for action in the face of the breakdown in US-Ukraine relations, the proposal by France marks the first publicly announced, concrete proposal for what a European-led ceasefire in Ukraine would look like. Starmer, Macron, and other EU leaders are correct in acknowledging that any ceasefire plan will need American backing sooner or later — but the challenge ahead of the Europeans in the immediate term is not to vie for a seat at Trump’s table as he continues to make concessions to Putin, but to create their own table instead. Doing this is much easier said than done, but the fact that the US has put the onus of post-war security guarantees on Europe does give it some degree of leverage — especially because this means that it will ultimately be up to the Europeans to allow the Trump administration to safely extract the mineral wealth that it is so intent on gaining from Ukraine. Nevertheless, for the most part Europe continues to be lost in the woods on how to proceed, giving Trump the latitude to continue deciding Ukraine and the continent’s future with Putin however he sees fit.

3. Bosnian Serb leader Dodik challenged a court conviction banning him from political life for six years, sparking fears of a crisis in Bosnia

After repeatedly making calls for the majority-Serb Republika Srpska territory to secede from Bosnia and join with Serbia, pro-Putin Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodiak was sentenced to one year in prison and banned from political office for six years by a court in Sarajevo for disobeying the international peace envoy to Bosnia. Dodik stated he would not accept the ruling and threatened to once again to secede in response, while the Republika Srpska entity he rules passed a law barring the national judiciary and police from exercising their authority on the entity’s soil. Dodik’s lawyers have stated they will appeal the ruling, while Russia has claimed that the ruling was politically motivated and has the potential to destabilize the entire Balkan region. Dodik was also backed diplomatically by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, while Bosniak leaders in Bosnia have called his moves a “coup d'état."

Why it matters: Dodik has been a thorn in the side of the Bosnian central government and its international backers for years, but this latest standoff between Republika Srpska and the central government in Sarajevo over Dodik’s fate might not only mark the start of a constitutional crisis in the country, but could also present a very real threat to the country’s fragile ethnic unity. In effect what Dodik is doing is prodding the Sarajevo government and the international community to see how far they are willing to go to enforce the post-war order that has existed in Bosnia for the past thirty years, and whether they possess real teeth to stand up to him and his government. In doing so however, he may well force Bosnia not only into an ethnically motivated legal showdown, but to the brink of a return to the warfare of the 1990s.

4. Following a national address, Hungary’s Orbán moved closer to full authoritarian rule with plans to crack down on opponents

In his annual State of the Nation address, Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán laid out a new crackdown against his critics, stating he would to “go to the wall” with new sovereignty laws targeting foreign-funded organizations and threatening to expel dissidents from the country. Orbán also denounced journalists and NGOs as “traitors,” and suggested he might ban Budapest’s LGBT pride parade. The moves come as Orbán faces an increasingly powerful challenge from Péter Magyar’s centrist TISZA Party, which has at times even eclipsed Orbán’s Fidesz Party in polls.

Why it matters: Since Trump took office in the US in January, Orbán has been growing bolder in his approach to his political opponents and liberal actors in the country who receive funds from overseas. He has been particularly inspired by Trump’s move to freeze USAID funds, which put unprecedented pressure on NGOs across Eastern Europe, and Orbán may well have decided that the time may be ripe to strike at such groups to further consolidate his autocratic power in Hungary. The country’s next parliamentary elections are still a year away, meaning that Orbán will have ample time to crack down on liberal elements of Hungarian society, potentially striking a blow to Magyar’s TISZA in the process.

5. Polish far-Right presidential candidate surged to 2nd place in polls as populists rallied around Trump amid growth in anti-Ukrainian views

Nearly two months ahead of Poland’s presidential elections in May, far-Right Confederation Party candidate Sławomir Mentzen has edged out the populist Law and Justice Party candidate Karol Nawrocki for 2nd place for the first time in a poll last week. Although Mentzen still trails Nawrocki in other polls, he appears to be steadily gaining on him — something that has prompted even frontrunner Rafał Trzaskowski’s center-left Civic Platform party to swing to the Right on issues like migration. Last week, in a reflection of the current national mood in the country, Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform government announced that it was set to carry out its largest deportation operation since the fall of communism in the country in 1989. Mentzen and Confederation’s rise has taken place as attitudes toward Ukraine and Ukrainians, who crossed into Poland by the millions as refugees in 2022, have begun to sour due to the agricultural impact of Ukrainian grain and socio-historical issues surrounding the legacy of the WWII-era Volhynia massacres. Last month, a survey showed that, for the first time, a slim majority of Poles would be in favor of stopping weapons shipments to Ukraine, and even as Trump has drifted closer to Moscow, supporters of Poland’s right-wing parties have continued to champion the US leader.

Why it matters: While Tusk and Trzaskowski are moving to the right on migration and are being more cautious in their rhetoric on Ukraine, they are undoubtedly doing so to outmaneuver challengers from the Right like Mentzen ahead of the elections. Even if Nawrocki and Mentzen lose in the elections in May, changing attitudes in Poland might present a longer term problem for the Civic Platform’s government, especially because Poland will likely have no other choice than to play an even greater role in guaranteeing Ukraine’s post-war security in America’s absence. Sooner or later though, the party will have to reckon with the ground shifting underneath their feet.

The Eastern Flank

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