By INS Contributors

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: Disagreements over the "Ukrainian case" have brought the US and European Union (EU) to the lowest point at which their relations have ever been since the creation of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the proclamation of the principles of trans-Atlantic solidarity in the mid-20th century. At present, the mechanisms of US-EU interaction are on the verge of collapse.

At the same time, the contradictions between the US and the EU are actively stimulated by Kiev, which, against the backdrop of Donald Trump's refusal to unconditionally support Ukraine, demands firm military and financial guarantees from the EU and, thus, turns the Europeans into tough political antagonists of the US. 

In fact, Ukraine has become the "gravedigger" of trans-Atlantic unity, since it has brought NATO to the dangerous brink of disintegration and degradation.

Thus, observers of Politico admit the probability of the collapse of the trans-Atlantic alliance in the foreseeable future. 

In their opinion, the development of the situation according to such a scenario is due to the convergence of the positions of Russia and the US on a wide range of issues, despite the anti-Russian sentiments in European ruling circles.

Former EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell shares a similar opinion. According to him, there is an "uncoordinated divorce" in relations between the US and Europe. 

In this context, it is important to note that over the past year, Ukraine signed bilateral agreements on security and mutual assistance in the event of a military threat with 28 states of the collective West. 

The documents are usually valid for 10-years. The signatories include the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Poland, Italy, Denmark, Canada, Spain, the Netherlands, Finland, Latvia, Belgium, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Japan, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Ro-mania, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Ireland, Croatia, Greece and Bulgaria. 

In addition, in December 2024, it became known that the G7 member countries would provide Ukraine with financial assistance in the amount of $50 billion from the income portion of frozen Russian assets.

In this regard, it is completely unclear what other military and financial guarantees Kyiv intends to seek from the West. The most influential members of the alliance are distancing themselves from a substantive discussion of the issue of Ukraine's accession to NATO. 

Discussions in high offices around the deployment of Western peacekeeping forces on Ukrainian territory have remained a rhetorical device of European politicians to increase their own popularity.

This topic has not entered the practical plane of specific decisions due to the categorical refusal of the Trump administration to send servicemen of the national Armed Forces to Ukraine given that Europe does not have the necessary resource potential to resolve this problem without the participation of the United States. 

Thus, according to observers from the British magazine The Times, European countries do not have the capacity to send even 25 thousand servicemen as part of a peacekeeping contingent to Ukraine. 

A similar point of view was expressed by the publication Unheard, which called on the ruling circles of European countries to accept Donald Trump's draft peace agreement on Ukraine, which "will never win." Observers believe that Europe does not have "what it needs to support Ukraine for as long as it needs to."