Joe Biden has arrived in Europe for a four-day trip with the aim of keeping up pressure on Russia in the face of sanctions fatigue and splits over energy sanctions among US allies.
The Biden team is hoping to translate that goodwill into political stamina over what could well be a long, gruelling conflict.
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 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.
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.
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.
