Davos is coming up just in time to inaugurate Donald J. Trump 2.0, and Europe is worried. Mr. Trump is like the sky to the Earth, argues Hubert Védrine, the former foreign minister of France, and the discussion of the results will dominate the exciting noise, of the countries that gather every year in the snow of the Swiss Alps.

Mr. Trump talks in different ways about the new big tax, about the annexation of Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, about connecting America to European security and not only for Europe to increase its military spending but also to reduce its large trade with the United States.

Mr. Védrine and other experts warn that Mr. Trump likes to talk big and negotiate, and that threats and challenges come and go. Like his former national security adviser, John Bolton he once told USA Todayworking at the White House for Mr. Trump was “like living in a pinball machine,” as Trump handled various issues.

But one of the main topics in Davos has to be Ukraine. Mr. Trump says he wants to end the war in one day, which no one sees, not even his special adviser on Ukraine, Keith Kellogg. Mr. Trump or not, Ukraine is slowly losing the war, and talks are coming to try to end the bloodshed, possibly this spring.

But the most important question is on what basis. Russian President Vladimir V. Putin is grappling with rising inflation and interest rates but has plunged his country into a wartime economy in what he describes as an ongoing confrontation with the West. Despite heavy casualties, it has so far been able to recoup its losses with significant economic incentives: 70 percent of its troops are coalition forces and only 7 percent are conscripts, said Zaki Laïdi, a French expert who advised the former head of the European Union. , Josep Borrell Fontelles.

Mr. Putin believes that he is winning the war and that the Europeans are determined to continue supporting Ukraine at a high economic cost, with little Ukrainian progress in the pipeline, argues Liana Fix of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. So even if Putin accepts the request or the request of Trump to enter the negotiations, it is considered that he will not agree to a ceasefire without good reasons and will insist on hard policies to end the war.

At his regular year-end and televised state summit, Putin repeated his insistence that Ukraine is not an independent country. Any negotiations, he said, will start “from what is happening in the world” and will be based on the way Russia is negotiating with the Ukrainian people in Istanbul in 2022: that Ukraine agrees to abandon its NATO aspirations and become a neutral country, accepting strict borders. on the growth of his army and changing his laws to respect the interests of Russia. Whether Putin will accept Ukrainian membership in the European Union is not known, but it is doubtful, because of the disagreement over the weak cooperation agreement between Kyiv and Brussels that led to the Maidan riots of 2013.

“Putin wants a reformed country, Ukraine is controlled by NATO,” said Ms. Fix. An American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, said that Putin wanted “not a neutral and neutral Ukraine.”

The intentions of Mr. Putin’s structural reforms in Europe, disrupting NATO and dividing Washington from Europe to Ukraine should not be ignored, said Norbert Röttgen, an expert in foreign politics and a lawmaker with the Christian Democratic Union, the party is expected. winning the German election at the end of February. “The future of Europe is a matter of security, and we must make this war against Russia,” he said. “Because even if it’s good the lesson is that war works.”

It is not clear how they will ensure Russia’s failure without a large and rapid increase in European support for Kyiv. European leaders talk about the need to do this and spend more to protect themselves. But they are divided on how quickly Russia represents a danger to them. They have their own economic problems, with a small size and age, and they do not agree with the money they can spend on their military forces, as Mr. Trump is expected that Europe will take more of the burden of helping Ukraine.

Mr. Trump’s indifference to multilateralism and his willingness to move to China means that the responsibility for European security “is ours now for the first time since December 1941, and Europe is not ready for this big change,” said Röttgen.

Mark Rutte, the new secretary general of NATO, who will be in Davos, argues in the same way, that Europe should do more in defense to help Ukraine to be able to negotiate from the power and prevent Russia in the future, no matter who America is. the president. European allies “must change their wartime mentality,” he said. He will urge NATO to set a new military spending target of 3 percent or even 3.5 percent of gross domestic product at the alliance’s next summit this summer in The Hague.

Since Russia is on the verge of collapse, Mr. Laïdi said, “We in Europe must stop Russia and strengthen our defense and start working hard.”

Mr. Röttgen repeated the words. Europe just has to do more, and do it through NATO, with no less nationalism, he argued. “Europe must understand that its security is about security and not just jobs,” he said.

Ukrainian leaders understand that negotiations are coming. For a while now, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has stopped short of saying that the war can end only with the full restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty over its 1991 borders, including Crimea and large parts of eastern Ukraine, which have been occupied for years by Russian troops. Mr. Zelensky, who will visit Davos, is instead emphasizing his country’s security after the cessation of hostilities, insisting that membership of the NATO alliance will be satisfactory.

This cannot be done, many experts and officials in Washington and Europe agree. But many, including Rutte and key members of the outgoing Biden administration, still argue that another major push for aid to Ukraine this year will bring Mr. Putin in the main talks. But it is unclear where that big push will come from.

“We still feel that Ukraine is fighting our war, but let’s be honest,” said Charles A. Kupchan, a former Obama administration official and director of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The United States has a plan without a plan,” he insists that the West will help Ukraine according to its conditions and that only Ukraine can decide when and how to negotiate, as if Washington does not have its own interests, he said. “This is dangerous and has turned Ukraine into a failed state,” he said.

Others see Russia and its desire to continue the war collapsing under economic and trade pressures, Mr. Kupchan said. “But I see the opposite: Russia is fine and Ukraine is running out of gas, without enough personnel or air defense, and it’s not like everything is in Western warehouses – we don’t have it.”

But even after the fighting, the most pressing issue, everyone agrees, is Ukraine’s future security. Is there a possible model of NATO membership and collective security that only affects the Ukrainian part? Will membership of the European Union, which is also considered far away, be enough? What would Russia allow, and could any promises of non-aggression be trusted?

Some argue – I think Mr. Trump would like – for Europe to oversee the security of Ukraine and ask for the deployment of European troops after the cessation of hostilities. But will he be there to enforce the ceasefire or the police? And if so, given the size of Ukraine and its long border with Russia, how many troops would it need? How much would all of this cost? Would it draw the military away from protecting NATO members and undermine their confidence in the alliance’s commitment to collective security? And wouldn’t they want American Airlines cover?

The European military proposal, which was initially floated by Estonians and sometimes mentioned by French President Emmanuel Macron, was met with great skepticism, including by Poland, which shares its long border with Russia.

A German official, also speaking in a diplomatic manner, said the talks were premature and unnecessary, giving Russia an easy way to divide Europe and the United States. First, he said, one must see how the war ends.

For Mr. Röttgen, the war is not close to the territory compared to the Ukrainian regime. “Ukraine must appear as an independent, stable country,” he said. This seems possible, but what is not clear is how to ensure that the emerging Ukraine is not attacked again.