As gruesome as the spectacle was, nothing happened yesterday other than what, since 5 November 2024, was perfectly known to happen.

To not know it, it was only the stupid. To hope for it, the Russians and their domestic and international dupes. Those who pretended not to know were those who counted on postponing the moment of redde rationem, which has now arrived, despite the pathetic efforts to carve out windows of opportunity for an impossible third way. Pretending to hope so – but not fully believing it – were all the red-brown scum, for whom Trumpism seemed too good and too anti-American to be true, too much in the image and likeness of the caricature of ugly, dirty and evil America to actually deliver on its promises.

Instead, Trump and the MAGA gang are just what they seem and do exactly what they say (if they can and if they are allowed to, of course). Trump is on Putin’s side because he feels the same way about the need to overcome the liberal political order in the life of states and relations between states, and would like to be him by making the US a plebiscitary autocracy and an oligarchic kleptocracy.

Given this ethical-political consonance, Trump and Putin have the same enemies, which are all those who linger and resist in the defence of the old Western system, founded on the alliance of law and freedom of the Euro-American front , and they have the same friends, namely those who, regardless of political colour, are willing to celebrate the advent of a mortal ‘season of peace’ and gain some advantage from it.

Either you stand with Trump and Putin, or you stand with Ukraine. Either one continues to defend this frontier of European and Western freedom, in the rational hope that, once the surrender is averted, it will be possible to negotiate a different and fairer peace for Ukraine, or one aligns oneself with Trump’s design, the consequences of which, however, would not stop with Ukraine and would affect all European countries.

In three years of war, Europe and the US have provided Ukraine with a little more than EUR 250 billion in aid, with a slight predominance of European aid and an average sacrifice of 0.2% of the donor countries’ GDP.

On paper, there are no financial problems to replace the American contribution, if the major European countries (not only the EU) were to increase their aid to Ukraine by even that much. There are serious problems – I honestly cannot say how insurmountable – to replace American military supplies, which will no longer be given or sold to the Ukrainians and their allies. Then there is a very serious problem of holding European public opinion against a choice of support for Ukraine, which the pro-Russian vulgate built up over two decades of infiltration into the continent’s media and politics would present as losing and risky.

How many countries will hold up? How broad and solid and therefore sufficient will the pro-Ukraine European front be? And where will Italy stand in this scenario? We will soon find out, and we will also find out how much, among all the dangers Europe and the West face, it is clear to the political elites abandoned by Trump that the capitulation of Ukraine is for all of them the greatest danger.