Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator. He is a former Guardian foreign editor, US editor, White House correspondent, foreign leader writer and Observer foreign affairs commentator. As you’d expect from someone who writes for The Guardian, he is far to the left of the political spectrum, absolutely hates President Trump, but, for a columnist who complained bitterly that Mr “Trump talks peace but he is a man of war“, yet it seems that more war is what he wants:

Ukraine is the biggest and most consequential of all the American betrayals

As the war enters its fifth year, it’s time for Europe to take the fight to Putin on its own terms and tell Trump to get lost

by Simon Tisdall | Saturday, February 21, 2026 | 1:00 AM EST

Viewed from Europe, the US’s failure to defend the people of Ukraine against Russian aggression is the greatest and most consequential of a host of recent American betrayals. It’s not just the sickening subservience shown to Vladimir Putin, an indicted war criminal and mass killer. It’s not only the victim-blaming and bullying of Kyiv into making concessions. It’s not even Donald Trump’s crass attempts to monetise the war and milk the misery of millions for Nobel glory, while undercutting Nato allies and trampling sovereign rights.

What really shocks, and hurts, is the sheer bad faith shown by a country that Europeans always counted a friend. As the 18th-century English gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe noted, “few circumstances are more afflicting than a discovery of perfidy in those whom we have trusted”. To echo Trump’s dark warning after he was rebuffed over Greenland: Europe will remember.

“Europe will remember,” huh? Does Europe remember the history of its wars?

Mr Tisdall then proceeds through several wordy paragraphs to place the blame for the war not having been won squarely at the feet of President Trump, even though he at least mentions Presidents Barack Obama, who did nothing during Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and Joe Biden, who supplied limited aid to Ukraine following the 2022 invasion, before he gets to this:

Here’s what must be done: deploy troops from a European “coalition of the willing” to secure and defend Kyiv and other unoccupied cities; Russia cannot be allowed a veto. Enforce a no-fly exclusion zone, as I have repeatedly urged. Surge defensive missiles and drones. Beach Russia’s shadow fleet. Step up covert “active measures”, including cyber and sabotage, to counter Kremlin hybrid warfare. Seize assets, expel spies, expose lies, change the narrative. Europe must demand an immediate ceasefire, followed by phased Russian withdrawals, and assume a lead role in any final settlement talks.

Who, I have to ask, might make up that “coalition of the willing” and send troops, combat troops, into positions in which they might come in direct military combat with Russia? How will European voters react in any of this fanciful coalition nations when their sons are sent to possibly fight and die in a war for Ukraine? I’m old enough to remember how Americans reacted to our long years fighting in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan.

Russia’s military has been seriously degraded after four long years of inconclusive war, but Vladimir Putin still controls a strategic nuclear arsenal. Given that Russia has been sending attack drones to damage Ukrainian infrastructure, there are no guarantees that the troops from the “coalition of the willing” won’t be struck by Russian weapons while the European troops “secure and defend Kyiv and other unoccupied cities.”

Winter is coming to an end now, but November is only nine months away, and much of Europe is dependent upon natural gas shipments from Russia to keep its people from freezing to death in the winter.

If not, why not? For consider the alternatives: endless war, endless killing, or an unsustainable, unjust peace on Trump-Putin terms. Europe is on notice: the US cannot be trusted. The challenge is indeed existential. All that it stands for and holds dear is potentially at stake. No matter how it’s done, for the sake of Ukraine’s exhausted, undefeated people and their own future peace and security, Europeans (including Britain) must finally find the unity, courage and wherewithal to take the military, economic, diplomatic and moral offensive.

Europe must take the fight directly to Putin’s door. And tell Trump to get lost.

Throughout their history, Europe has been very good at getting into wars. The first World War is a lesson in point, in which none of the nations truly wanted to get into war, but coalitions and posturing and odd visions of what each country had to do let the entire continent stumble into a war they everyone, on every side, expected to end in quick victory, yet which deposed government after government, and left half a generation of young men laying dead in the mud.

I’m old enough to remember when the left were the ones who were most adamantly anti-war; now it seems that has been reversed, and the left are the first ones to issue a call to arms. But wait, it’s different, because, just like the pro-Palestinian protesters, today’s left might agitate for a side during a war, the left aren’t the ones actually picking up rifles and heading for the fight, but expecting Other People to be the ones on the firing line.