Joe Biden has arrived in Europe for a four-day trip with the aim of keeping up pressure on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, amid sanctions fatigue and splits over energy sanctions among US allies.
Biden will take part in an emergency Nato summit, a G7 summit and a meeting of the European Council in Brussels on Thursday – all groups that largely welcome a return of US leadership and engagement in Europe after the nadir of the Donald Trump administration.
The Biden team is hoping to translate that goodwill into political stamina over what could well be a long, gruelling conflict.
On Wednesday night, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukraine was “waiting for meaningful steps” from the three gatherings and listed so-far unheeded requests, such as a no-fly zone, aircraft and tanks. “Our firm position will be represented at these three summits. At these three summits we will see: who is a friend, who is a partner, and who betrayed us for money.”
Biden’s trip will also, to some extent, be a lap of honour for the US president’s success so far in keeping allies and partners together in confronting Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, told journalists on Air Force One on the way to Brussels: “What we would like to hear is that the resolve and unity that we’ve seen for the past month will endure for as long as it takes.”
But ratcheting up pressure on the Kremlin as the atrocities in Ukraine worsen will be far harder than the concerted measures taken so far. There are fundamental splits within the EU on whether to follow the US in imposing an embargo on energy imports from Russia, with Germany, which is heavily dependent, adamantly against. The chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has argued it would hurt Germany more than Russia.
Previewing the trip, Sullivan made clear that the president was not going to push the issue, sensitive to the fact that the implications for Germany and other European states are far more severe than for the US, which imported a very small amount of Russian oil.
Biden, Sullivan said, recognized “that some of our European allies and partners would not be able to follow suit and he was not going to pressure them to do so”.
“There’s a lot more room to ratchet up sanctions if the United States and Europe decide to do so,” Edward Fishman, a former senior state department official focused on sanctions, said. “We’re at about a seven or eight out of 10 in intensity. We’re definitely not a 10 out of 10.”
“I think the most important sanction that the US and Europe could impose would be a global campaign to reduce Russian oil sales across the board,” Fishman, now at Columbia University’s school of international and public affairs, added. “I don’t anticipate that’s going to come out of the meeting tomorrow. However, some of the groundwork for that campaign could be laid.”
Biden will make an announcement on Friday morning, before leaving Brussels for Poland, on a long-term initiative to reduce European dependence on Russian oil and gas, the national security adviser said.
A package of new sanctions due to be announced on Thursday will partly involve the US catching up with Europe. Sullivan said that some of the new raft of measures will target Russian politicians and oligarchs. The Wall Street Journal has reported, for example, that Biden will announce targeted measures on members of the Russian state Duma. The US could also enlarge its list of sanctioned Russian oligarchs, which is missing some of the names that are on European and British lists.
It is also possible more Russian banks and state enterprises will be added to a blacklist, which would cut them off from using the Belgium-based Swift financial messaging system.
Sullivan said a principal focus will be on tighter enforcement of existing measures, coordinated through the G7. Part of Thursday’s announcement, he said would be “a joint effort to crack down on evasion on sanctions-busting, on any attempt by any country to help Russia basically undermine or weaken or get around the sanctions”.
That may mean more details of a joint taskforce aimed at tracking down the hidden assets of the oligarchs, Putin’s circle and their extended families.
Another tougher element of the European Council meeting will be an effort to forge a common front towards China, before a planned EU summit with Xi Jinping next week. Biden wants the Europeans to echo the US message that any supplies of Chinese armaments to the faltering Russian military campaign would have severe consequences for economic relations.
The Nato meeting will in theory be an easier affair. On the eve of the summit, the alliance announced it will double the number of its deployed battlegroups, sending them to Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovakia, matching the bilateral deployments already made by the US, the UK and others to Poland and the Baltic states. The secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said there would be more announcements on the eastern flank on Thursday.
Behind closed doors, the leaders will have to make plans for how to respond to a range of extreme contingencies, like the use of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons by a desperate Putin. Before boarding the Marine One helicopter on the first leg of his trip, Biden repeated his warning that chemical weapons, in particular, remain a serious threat.
There will also be a discussion of Nato’s long-term plans in terms of deployments. Under a 1997 agreement with Russia, the US agreed not to deploy its troops permanently in the frontline states. Since the annexation of Crimea in 2014 it has stepped up the US presence in Poland and the Baltic states, but in rotating deployments to honour the letter of that agreement. But the US and its closest allies now see that deal as worthless and the road is open to contemplate permanent basing, which the Baltic nations, in particular have been calling for.
“We don’t have all the answers yet,” Julianne Smith, the US ambassador to Nato, said. “Permanent stationing could be one solution or persistent rotations is another option that could be on the table. At this point, what we need to do is have our military commanders give us the best advice they can and come to us with specific proposals.”
Underpinning those discussions will be the nagging insecurity that eastern European states have over whether the US would really come to their rescue in the event of a Russian attack. Biden’s trip to Poland on Friday and Saturday will in part be intended to address that anxiety.
The president and the Europeans will be meeting are acutely aware that his predecessor called US commitment to Nato into question, and that Trump could return to the presidency in 2025.
Robert Hunter, a former US ambassador to Nato, argued: “The alliance, and particularly the United States, must also recognize, if only sotto voce for now, how serious the credibility problem has become and the need for it to rise to the top of the long-term US and Nato foreign policy agenda.”
