The Three Swords of Damocles: Why Ukraine and Europe Must Break Free from US Dependency

If Trump calls Putin, the Ukrainians must expect the worst. A year ago, Putin rang Trump whilst the Ukrainian President Zelensky was on a plane bound for Washington. In Ukraine’s eyes, the delivery of Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine was a done deal.

The Three Swords of Damocles: Why Ukraine and Europe Must Break Free from US Dependency

If Trump calls Putin, the Ukrainians must expect the worst. A year ago, Putin rang Trump whilst the Ukrainian President Zelensky was on a plane bound for Washington. In Ukraine’s eyes, the delivery of Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine was a done deal. All that remained, so to speak, was for the American and Ukrainian presidents to formalise the deal. But the phone call between Trump and Putin intervened. Trump put the delivery of the Tomahawks on the back burner. This was particularly painful for Zelensky: the call apparently took place at the suggestion of Steve Witkoff, the estate agent whom Trump regularly sends to Moscow for talks with Putin.

Friday 9 October saw it happen again. Just as a Ukrainian delegation, accompanied by European experts, was sitting round the table with Steve Witkoff at his golf resort in Florida, the envoy suddenly left the meeting room. He had to eavesdrop on the conversation between his boss, Trump, and Putin. And the result was yet another humiliation for Ukraine and its European allies.

A Business Deal at Kyiv’s Expense

Trump announced that Russia would immediately supply 300,000 tonnes of diesel – the equivalent of one super tanker. Further deliveries were also expected in the future. Trump touted this as if it would drastically reduce the price of diesel, which is not the case. 300,000 tonnes may seem like a lot, but that amounts to barely 2.2 million barrels – not even enough to cover one day’s consumption by the transport sector in the US.

But Russia received a huge gift from the White House: extra revenue with which it can finance the war against Ukraine without having to give anything in return. Putin had once again succeeded in persuading Trump to abandon Ukraine for a business deal. It is also becoming increasingly clear that the circles around Trump want to start doing business with Russia as soon as possible, and that the end of the war is less and less of a prerequisite for this.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, enormous pressure was being exerted on Ukraine not to attack any oil refineries in Russia in the future, as, according to Washington, this would have led to a reduction in Russian diesel exports and thus a shortage on the global diesel market. However, barely a third of the world’s diesel came from Russia, whilst two-thirds came from the Middle East. There, many refineries have been damaged by the Iranian response to the US air strikes that Trump launched at the start of this year.

The Three Swords of Damocles

In various telephone calls with Ukrainian officials, threats were made that the US would exploit Ukraine’s three major vulnerabilities to make Kyiv change its mind – the three swords of Damocles that constantly hang over the heads of the Ukrainian people.

First and foremost, this concerns the supply of specific American weapons for which there is no alternative, such as Patriot air-defence missiles. Furthermore, Ukraine survives thanks to the flow of military intelligence it receives in real time via the US, such as the detection of missile launches in Russia, which enables Ukraine to put its air defences on alert and warn the population. Finally, for operations on the front line – and particularly for the deployment of drones – Ukraine relies on Starlink and Starshield, the military arm of Elon Musk’s satellite system.

The supply of Patriot missiles to Ukraine has long been a problem due to a growing shortage following the Gulf War earlier this year. Saudi Arabia alone used almost its entire stockpile of 2,800 PAC-3 interceptors during the active phase of the war. In three days, all the Gulf states used more than 800 interceptors. That is more than Ukraine has used in four years of war, President Zelensky said in March this year.

The small stockpile that Ukraine still had, has been completely used up. To make matters worse, according to Kyiv, Defence Minister Pete Hegseth has halted the delivery of new interceptor missiles, even though Europe has already paid for them. Without Patriot interceptor missiles, Kyiv has no defence against attacks by Russian ballistic missiles, which leaves it particularly vulnerable with winter approaching.

The other two ‘swords’ – intelligence and Starlink – have also been activated, albeit not permanently. From time to time, Ukraine receives no warnings of ballistic missile attacks on energy infrastructure. The control of drones on the front line in eastern Ukraine suddenly faltered because Starlink limited the speed of the controlled object to a maximum of 160 kilometres per hour, sometimes even less, whilst drones can reach much higher speeds. The order to restrict Starlink and Starshield apparently came from the White House, although the White House denied that it had interfered with the system to the detriment of Ukraine.

For Zelensky, this was a clear slap in the face that he found difficult to come to terms with. In an interview with Piers Morgan, he even said that he felt betrayed by Trump and Elon Musk, the owner of Starlink. Trump, who cannot tolerate dissent, subsequently turned up the pressure even further: he believed that Ukraine needed a new leader, and he suspended new sanctions against Russia for two months.

It appears that Washington has dealt Ukraine a few pinpricks to remind it of its vulnerabilities in its relationship with the US. And at the same time, Ukraine’s European allies have also been warned not to get too carried away in their indignant reactions.

A Distracted Europe

So here we are again, with tensions between Kyiv and Washington escalating rapidly, and Europe caught up in the fray. In my view, both Ukraine and Europe must now, above all, remain realistic and acknowledge the vulnerabilities – the three swords of Damocles. During moments of crisis over the past year and a half, European leaders (and Zelensky too) have worked tirelessly to steer Trump back onto the right path, usually with success. Once again, this seems to be the only realistic response. It is not a process to be proud of, but moral indignation achieves little in this pure power game being played by the unreliable and fickle American president.

Behind the scenes, Europe has already urged Zelensky to tone down his rhetoric, but for the time being there is no concerted effort to get Trump to hear the other side of the story. The key European leaders are keeping their distance and are not seeking contact with the White House. They are distracted by domestic issues. Macron must focus on the street riots in France, whilst Friedrich Merz is grappling with the sharp rise of the far right in Germany. And many European countries, such as France and Belgium, are struggling with large budget deficits that threaten to significantly limit their policy scope.

European leaders also realise that Trump is currently under severe pressure due to the dramatic midterm election polls and that this makes him even less open to reason. They know he is someone for whom the word ‘loss’ does not feature in his vocabulary. He will do everything in his power to try to reverse the predicted poor result. And the fate of Ukraine is the least of his worries in this regard.

A Strategic Shift or Fickle Politics?

The longer this goes on, the more the question arises as to whether this is yet another example of Trump’s fickleness or whether it represents a strategic change of course. Just a few months ago, Trump was still quite complimentary about the Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil infrastructure. In recent months, relations between Trump and Zelensky had also warmed up following the cold shoulder Zelensky had received during his first visit to the White House after Trump’s inauguration.

But the diesel deal was of a different order. It was not just empty words. American money would be flowing into the Russian war machine, whilst the US did not really need that Russian diesel. Incidentally, Europe, too, is constantly channelling money indirectly into the Russian war chest through the purchase of LNG, but Europe has few alternatives and hopes to halt those supplies by the end of this year. Trump seemed to be reverting to his default position: his heart has always lain more with Russia than with Ukraine. He simply feels more at ease dealing with autocratic leaders than with democratically elected ones. In Ukraine’s view, he had crossed the Rubicon, which explained Ukraine’s sharp reaction, even though it did nothing to de-escalate the situation – quite the contrary.

Forging European Alternatives

The longer-term lesson that Europe and Ukraine must learn from this is clear: the vulnerabilities must be eliminated as quickly as possible. This will not happen overnight, as these are complex systems that take time to develop. But Europe has more possibilities to achieve this than many people think.

Europe has an alternative to the US Patriot air defence system: the Franco-Italian SAMP/T NG. However, the system is new and has yet to prove its reliability in a wartime environment – something the Patriots have long since done. For the time being, there are few fully operational SAMP/T systems available, and production capacity for the interceptor missiles is also still relatively low. But it does show that Europe is not without resources.

The same applies to an ‘early warning’ system. These were developed during the Cold War and are extremely complex. Only the world’s two major nuclear powers, the US and Russia, have a fully operational system. Various sensors, such as satellites and ‘over-the-horizon’ radars, must be coordinated to produce a real-time signal indicating missile launches. In this regard, France can certainly play an important role with its Nostradamus radar, an ‘over-the-horizon’ radar west of Paris which has been undergoing modernisation since 2025. A year ago, France and Germany also took the first step towards an integrated system with the JEWEL initiative (Joint Early Warning for a European Lookout). Ultimately, this is intended to form the basis of a European early warning system. However, initial operational capability is targeted for the early 2030s, so that will still take some time.

Europe can also build an alternative to Starlink, just as it did for the American GPS: Galileo. The expertise is there; Europe is capable of launching its own rockets. The first step has already been taken with the IRIS² project which will put almost 350 satellites in orbit. It is comparable to the Starshield variant of Starlink, aimed at providing secure communications for governmental organisations. It should be operational by 2030. Most of the low orbit satellites will be built by a Belgian company, Aerospacelab.

Europe could also think about a commercial alternative for Starlink, providing a similar service for citizens around the world. Europe has a number of strong telecoms companies that also have a vested interest in not being dependent on a system controlled by a mercurial billionaire who openly supports far-right movements in Europe.

The Ultimate Stakes

Both Ukraine and Europe are once again facing a difficult period in this war. This comes just as Ukraine is making some progress on the ground in the east, and Russia is beginning to feel the pain of the war in its economy. Europe is also facing a challenging election year in which, according to the polls, pro-Russian parties are set to do well. Marine Le Pen has already stated that, as President of France, she would halt aid to Ukraine after six months.

It is precisely for this reason that Putin has opted for escalation in Ukraine and on NATO’s eastern flank. He wants to convince voters in Europe that further support for Ukraine is no longer worthwhile. At the same time, he is now trying to persuade Trump to withdraw all support for Ukraine and to side definitively with Russia. He realises better than anyone that he stands a fairly good chance of succeeding with the US President because the latter’s heart lies with Russia rather than with Ukraine.

Europeans must understand more than ever that a collapse of Ukraine, will mean that our way of life and our values will also be dragged down into the abyss. It is therefore up to the European countries to come up with a response to the attempts by both Russia and the US to break the Ukrainian resistance.

(Photo credit:  Canva Teams / Wikimedia Commons)