What Trump's win really means for Eastern Europe: A detailed and comprehensive look
From Ukraine to the Balkans, Trump's return to power will have drastic consequences for Eastern Europe, but not necessarily in the ways you might think
Well before Donald Trump officially crossed the 270 Electoral College mark yesterday, one of the first leaders to congratulate him on his victory was none other than Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky. “I appreciate President Trump’s commitment to the ‘peace through strength’ approach in global affairs,” Zelensky wrote on X. “This is exactly the principle that can practically bring just peace in Ukraine closer.”
Zelensky’s performative zeal for Trump was very clearly a political ploy — with the fate of Ukraine’s defense in the hands of whoever occupies the White House come January 20, the Ukrainian president has been doing everything in his power to ingratiate himself with Trump well before November 5 as a fail safe in case of his return to power. With Trump victorious, Zelensky is hoping he can continue stroking his ego just enough to keep Ukraine in Trump’s good graces and thus avoid being served to Putin on a silver platter.
Zelensky, Ukrainians, and people across Eastern Europe have much to fear indeed from a second Trump administration. The unpredictability of American policy in Europe under Trump 2.0 is reason enough to be worried. But Trump’s return to office does not automatically give Putin a green light to run roughshod throughout the region — the truth, as always, is more complicated. Here’s a breakdown of how things might realistically play out, and what to pay attention to:
Ukraine
Trump’s distaste American military support for Ukraine is well documented, as is his fantastical promise to solve the conflict with a single phone call to Putin. Trump has frequently boasted about the idea that he would be able to bring Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table if elected, suggesting last year that he would pressure Zelensky to do so by cutting off additional American aid, and pressuring Putin to agree to some sort of deal by telling him he would resume military assistance to Ukraine if he did not. Trump’s soon-to-be vice president JD Vance expanded on what a potential peace plan would look like, describing Russian annexations of currently occupied Ukrainian territory, a demilitarized but heavily fortified buffer zone between the two countries, and guarantees of Ukrainian neutrality outside of NATO — in short, music to Russia’s ears. Most recently, the The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Trump’s team of advisors are offering him a variety of competing approaches to Ukraine, but that Trump’s ultimate plan remains unknown.
While the majority of the proposals floating around in Trump World would be a nightmare scenario for Ukraine, Ukrainians know as well as Americans that Trump should be taken seriously, but not necessarily literally — reading between the lines of his self-centered ramblings is a core pillar of Trumpology. Advisors and confidantes can craft all the plans they like, but what Trump ultimately cares about is his image as an international deal-maker who delivers “wins” for America on the global stage. For some Euro-Atlantic security veterans, this is something to be hopeful about — if Trump understands that a plan of the kind laid out by Vance would be understood as a loss for the US and a stain on its legacy, he may be persuaded to pursue other options. Infamously, Trump is also well-known to adhere to whatever policy position he hears last before giving a speech or taking a phone call with world leaders — meaning that someone like Mike Pompeo, who is in the running to lead the Pentagon and has advocated for much stronger American support for Ukraine through even greater and quicker weapons shipments, may be in a position to influence Trump’s views as much as MAGA loyalists.
Trump, who has reportedly called Putin seven times since leaving office, is far and away the less shrewd politician between the two, to put it mildly, and Trump’s attempts at dealmaking with the Russian leader may well expose him to manipulation on an epic scale that would leave Ukraine at Moscow’s mercy. After initially stoic responses from Russian officials, who stated that the US and Russia are still at war “both directly and indirectly,” Putin congratulated Trump yesterday, calling him “a courageous man” and saying he was ready to discuss Ukraine with him. Having long admired Putin, Trump will be dangerously susceptible to the Russian leader’s overtures, especially if he can be convinced that reaching a Kremlin-friendly deal on Ukraine could be spun as a “win” for him internationally. Once again here though, Trump’s unpredictability and egoism mean that Putin can’t rest on his laurels in Ukraine just yet, and the world must be prepared for Trump to pull an 11th hour about-face on the matter at any moment.
For Ukraine however there is a growing sense that, with or without Trump, the war may soon be drawing to its close. Yes, the Biden administration has failed to give Ukraine the tools and operational latitude it needs to win the war, but even with top-notch American weapons and permissions to use them on Russian territory, turning the tide against the advance of Russia’s military at this stage would be an incredibly tall order. Gone are the days of Russia’s strategic and tactical blunders in the first year of the war, and as Zelensky’s former spokesperson Iuliia Mendel wrote on Tuesday, by fighting to regain lost territory, Kyiv is sacrificing the Ukrainian nation — the logic in continuing the war seems to be to “die now to avoid possibly dying later.”
Capitulating to Putin’s will though is hardly on the table for Ukraine — but the cautious hope seems to be that, like him or not, Trump may offer it an opening to change its fortunes in one way or another. After all, anything is better than the “slow death” Ukrainians feel they are going through. Whether this gamble will pay off however is an impossible question to answer, and the risks for Ukraine in potentially betting on Trump remain incredibly high.
What is certain however is that, under Trump, America will decidedly step back from Europe. Trump advisors speaking to WSJ said that any post-war security guarantees would have to be handled by Europeans — “We are not sending American men and women to uphold peace in Ukraine,” the source said. “And we are not paying for it. Get the Poles, Germans, British and French to do it.” Any longer-term support for Ukraine’s defense then will have to come from the continent itself, even though it remains vastly unprepared to do so. If Europe is serious about becoming the guarantor of Ukraine’s defense, to say nothing of its own security, a radical reorientation of defense spending, military industrial production, and war readiness will need to take place — and practically over night.
The burden for this shift though will be felt across the continent, but most strongly in its East.
NATO’s Eastern Shield
Trump’s return to power will mean one thing and one thing only for NATO’s eastern members: that their days of relying on America for security are decidedly over. What this will look like remains to be seen — Trump will either entirely withdraw from NATO, or more likely, will refuse to defend NATO allies and drawn down America’s military presence in Europe. But whatever form this take, the consequences will have a potentially existential impact on Eastern European states’ foreign and defense policies that has not fully been appreciated by international observers. Countries like Poland joined NATO expressly as a guarantee against Russian — and German — aggression, believing that an American security blanket was the only way to pacify its indefensible borders. Without the US and with realistically only the UK, France and maybe Germany to rely on for aid, this entire structure falls apart, and Poland once again finds itself in 1939.
The significant of this has not been lost on Poland, and Warsaw has been preparing for Trump’s rise since even before 2022. Although it still has a long way to before it can fend for itself militarily against Russia, it has made great progress since then, and today possesses the third largest military in NATO in terms of manpower behind only the US and Turkey. Within the power vacuum created by Trump 2.0, Poland’s role across the region and the continent will only grow further, and not only on defense, according to Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski. "When it comes to military spending and decisions on migration policy, Poland is already doing what our allies will soon start doing,” Sikorski said after Trump’s election.
Alongside its Western neighbors, Poland is likely to lead much of the European security transformation that, while having come too slowly and too late, is now finally taking on greater urgency across the continent. The country has for years aimed to become a regional exporter of security while also beefing up its own arsenal through weapons purchases from the US, South Korea, and others, and on America’s election day, it announced it would invest $750 million on ammunition production.
Poland, as well as other countries along NATO’s eastern flank like Estonia, Lithuania, and Romania, may well seek to continue buying weapons from the US, and by consequence, continue to have ties to the American military-industry complex under Trump. Romania recently received a $920 million loan from the Biden administration to continue purchasing American-made weapons in the near-future. This may give Trump a financial stake in keeping Eastern Europe armed — although he has expressed unwillingness to support Ukraine and NATO by giving US weapons away for free, selling arms to eager Eastern European militaries will continue to be a significant and lucrative venture for his administration and American military contractors. This would be a win for Ukraine as well, as Poland, Romania, and the Baltics may opt to donate some of these weapons to Ukraine on their own.
While much talk has focused on the dangers of America’s withdrawal from Eastern Europe, there could be limited advantages to it as well, namely the greater latitude frontline NATO countries could gain to pursue their own local security agendas. For months, Poland and Romania in particular have been angling to be able to shoot down Russian missiles over Ukraine before they reach their territories, but have been stopped in their tracks by the US at every turn. With Biden gone and Trump in retreat, these countries might be able to chart out more independent defense policies and more localized approaches to the war in Ukraine that would address their unique geopolitical needs.
But although the Ukraine conflict is the immediate concern for NATO’s east, with Trump in power, the conversation has already shifted to what happens afterward. The war has constrained Putin’s capacities for the past two years, but with the assumption that Trump’s victory will bring the war to a close sooner rather than later, he will have a free hand to look further afield for ways to expand his sphere of influence and push back against NATO gains.
The Baltic states have long been the most likely focus for Putin after the war’s end, and it is likely that, without American guarantees, they may find themselves in the epicenter of the Kremlin’s hybrid war against NATO. Whether or not this would turn into a full-scale invasion of the Baltics would depend both on the state of Russia’s military and manpower capabilities, which would be significantly damaged regardless of the outcome of the war in Ukraine, and on Europe’s ability to establish some meaningful level of deterrence on the continent in the vacuum left by Trump’s departure. Europe will not be able to replicate American military production capabilities anytime soon, however if it gets its act together now, it may be able to catch up just enough to make a Russian incursion into the Baltics too costly to justify.
The difficult truth for the Baltics has always been that, even with American security guarantees, a swift Russian invasion would likely advance across at least most of Estonia before allied NATO forces in Europe would be able to stop them, and well before American forces would arrive from across the Atlantic. In the current security configuration, the Baltic states most immediately rely on Poland for aid in the event of a Russian invasion with Swedish and Finnish forces providing assistance at sea, and these would likely remain their primary bulwarks against Russian aggression in the Trump era. The chance that Putin decides these obstacles, together with eventual British and French reinforcements, aren’t enough to deter him from such an act remain too high for comfort — but a Russian invasion is not yet an inevitability. If the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which are less technologically advanced than their Polish counterparts, could withstand the full force of the Russian army, it’s possible that the combined forces of a European Coalition of the Willing would as well.
But the mere fact such possibilities are being seriously discussed in Eastern Europe now is shocking, and underscores the fundamental shifts Trump’s pivot away from NATO will perpetuate. All that Eastern Europeans can hope for is that they still have enough time to adapt to this new reality before Putin does.
Eastern Europe’s Right
Since Trump’s first term in office, the Right-wing in Europe has surged on both the EU and national levels, with powerful, Eurosceptic, and vaguely pro-Russian nationalists gaining power and prominence in the continent’s East. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has emerged as a kingmaker of sorts, creating a new Right-wing grouping in the European Parliament. Orbán’s long-time ties to Trump have fostered not only a personal friendship between them, but also a close exchange of policy ideas that has led to close connections between Budapest and the American Right in general. Orbán, who made no secret of his efforts to help Trump win the election, claimed this summer that he has been directly involved in writing policy with the Trump team.
Trump’s return to office is exactly what Orbán had been counting on after years of steadily inching toward pariah status within the EU and NATO due to his closeness to Russia, opposition to assisting Ukraine, radical migration policies, and blatant disregard for European national security in the face of threats from the Kremlin. Despite being an outside in his immediate neighborhood, Orbán, and by proxy his allies across Eastern and Central Europe, now have a co-conspirator in the most powerful office on Earth. By the same token, while Trump will broadly seek to distance himself from Europe diplomatically and militarily, he will likely deepen ties to his ideological sympathizers not only in Hungary, but also in Robert Fico’s Slovakia, and among minority Right-wing parties in Poland, Romania, and the Baltic States. What this might practically mean for Eastern Europe’s Right remains to be seen, but a diplomatic, political, and perhaps even financial relationship with Trump’s administration will undeniable boost their standing on the continent even further.
Trump does not agree on everything with these Right-wingers — Orbán for instance has close ties to China that Trump may not approve of. But if there’s anything Trump loves, its illiberal strongmen who stake their brand on going after liberals, meaning that Orbán and Fico’s boats will rise with Trump in the White House, potentially catalyzing a broader, global reinvigoration of Right-wing populism that will be increasingly unified in its vision.
The Balkans
In Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska, Putin-friendly and US-sanctioned leader Milorad Dodik hosted a cocktail party to celebrate Trump’s victory this week, suggested he hoped his victory would bring about a period when the US would not “impose” unpopular ideas on the world. Reading between the lines, Dodik is likely hoping that Trump will remove sanctions measures the Biden administration has imposed on him, as do several other politicians in Albania who were also quick to congratulate Trump this week.
Yet for Dodik, together with his ally Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, their support for Trump goes much further than personal sanctions — in Trump, they see a chance that the US will shift its stance on longstanding divides in Bosnia and Kosovo where America has worked with the EU and NATO for decades to constrain Serbian efforts to expand their political and territorial reach. With Jared Kushner having secured real estate deals in Belgrade this year, Trump World will have significant material incentives to back Vučić’s nationalist campaigns, especially due to his closeness to Orbán and his traditionalist Right-wing agenda.
In Bosnia, Trump’s support for Dodik and his efforts to dismantle the country may well doom the central government in Sarajevo, which has for years been held hostage by Dodik’s quest to paralyze the state. In 2023, Dodik stated that if Trump wins, he and Republika Srpska will move to “secede” from Bosnia — although he has done nothing yet to make good on such a threat, like the rest of Eastern Europe, he is likely watching and waiting to see what Trump does first. In Kosovo, PM Albin Kurti, who has already earned the ire of Europe for his unilateral moves to assert sovereignty in the face of Serbian influence this year, may well find himself even more isolated with a diminished American role on the European stage. With Trump’s de facto or de jure withdrawal from NATO, the alliance’s peacekeeping force in Kosovo will likely also be weakened, meaning Serbia may see an opening for a more aggressive approach toward the country.
Although a fresh war between Serbia and Kosovo would certainly be possible, attempts by Vučić to exert renewed pressure on Kurti to give up north Kosovo are much more likely. If Dodik declares independence from Bosnia however, a quick descent into state collapse is all but certain, and a subsequent reopening of the ethnic violence of the 1990s may well follow suit. The only thing keeping Dodik from descending down this path may be his patron Vučić’s own desires to keep the EU in his good graces in hopes of one day securing Serbia’s accession to the bloc, but within a weakened Europe, Vučić and Dodik’s calculations may well shift. Yet it wouldn’t even take active efforts by Trump to empower Serbian forces across Serbia, Bosnia, and Kosovo — even Trump’s negligence of the region as part of his broader turn away from Europe would do the trick.
Regardless of their political backgrounds, Eastern Europeans everywhere understand that Trump’s return will fundamentally alter politics and defense across the entire region. Ukraine will feel the consequences most immediately and acutely, but the impact will inevitably fan out from Estonia in the north to Albania in the south soon afterward. What’s important to remember though is that, despite appearances, Trump’s election does not mean that Eastern Europe’s near-term future is set in stone. He is an irrational actor surrounded by ideologically driven yes-men — a reality that should rightly terrify people in Europe’s East. But despite being squarely in the corner of Putin and right-wing populists, Trump remains a pliable figure whose chief concern is his own legacy and image, leaving openings for well-placed political actors to pursue political goals that may ultimately allow the region to avoid a worst case scenario, so long as they play their cards right.
The most important conclusion to be drawn at the present moment however is that Trump is merely a new condition that has been forced upon Eastern Europe — and that how the region deals with this new reality rests entirely on its leaders and its people. For some in Eastern Europe, this transformation in perspective has already begun.
“Some claim that the future of Europe depends on the American elections,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X, “while it depends first and foremost on us.”
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I respect your opinion. Trump will give Ukraine to Putin by ending aid, ending sanctions. Europe isn't serious and won't ever be.
I believe nukes are a viable for Ukraine. Most disagree.
So is it possible to make Ukraine indigestible for Russia by guerilla resistance based out of Poland??