European leaders have gotten the message from Washington about doing more for their own defense and for Ukraine, too. They are talking tough when it comes to supporting Ukraine and about protecting their own borders, and they are standing up to a demanding and even hostile Trump administration.

But there is an inevitable gap between talk and action, and unity is fracturing already, especially when it comes to spending and borrowing money in a period of low growth and high debt.

The Dutch and others are not fans of raising collective debt for defense. Keeping Hungary on board is ever more difficult.

And when the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced a plan for billions more for the military, called “ReArm Europe,” two of the bloc’s largest countries, Italy and Spain, thought that was all a bit aggressive. So now the plan has been rebranded as “Readiness 2030.”

That’s a year after Donald J. Trump is no longer expected to be president. But it is also a realistic understanding that Europe’s new commitment to self-reliance will take time, billions of euros, political deftness and cooperation with the United States.

Kaja Kallas, the former prime minister of Estonia who is now the chief foreign and security official for the European Union, has been a forceful advocate for supporting Ukraine as a first line of European defense against an aggressive, militarized Russia.

But it has been a rocky start for Ms. Kallas. Her effort to get the E.U. to provide up to 40 billion euros (more than $43 billion) to Ukraine through a small, fixed percentage levy on each country’s national income has gone nowhere.

Her backup proposal, for an added €5 billion as a first step toward providing Ukraine two million artillery shells this year, was also rejected by Italy, Slovakia and even France, an E.U. official said, speaking anonymously in accordance with diplomatic practice. The countries insisted that contributions to Ukraine remain voluntary, bilateral and not required by Brussels.

And her recent response to Mr. Trump’s effort to push Ukraine into a cease-fire without security assurances rubbed many the wrong way, both in Europe and Washington, as dangerously premature. “The free world needs a new leader,” she wrote on X. “It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.”

But in fact the Europeans are working hard to respond to Mr. Trump in a convincing fashion. Ms. von der Leyen sold her rearmament or readiness plan with a headline figure of €800 billion. But only €150 billion of that is real money, available as long-term loans for countries that wish to use it for the military. The rest simply represents a notional figure — a four-year permission from the bloc for countries to borrow even more for military purposes out of their own national budgets.

For a country like Germany, which has low debt, that is likely to work, especially now that the next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, got Parliament to agree to loosen its own debt rules to allow for huge spending on the military, civilian infrastructure and climate.

But for countries like Italy and Spain, which can feel far away from Russia and have their own fiscal problems, that may not be an easy choice. France, despite President Emmanuel Macron’s strong words about European “strategic autonomy” and his desire to lead the Continent, is itself deeply indebted, and piling on more debt is politically and economically hazardous.

France, too, is insisting on a high percentage of European content and manufacture for any weapons bought with the new loans, and is so far working to keep American, British and Canadian companies from participating. And other issues are intruding; an E.U. effort to draft a defense agreement with Britain is being held up by Paris over squabbles about fisheries.

But Europe will spend considerably more on defense, as it has known it must, said Ian Lesser, director of the Brussels office of the German Marshall Fund. “The advent of the Trump administration has given history a shove,” he said. “We’re not in a linear environment, with a linear spending trajectory.”

On NATO, too, major European countries are beginning to talk seriously about how to replace the vital American role in the alliance — both in terms of sophisticated arms and political and military leadership. But there is little desire to accelerate any rupture with Washington, since any such transition is likely to take five or even 10 years.

Now, 23 of 27 E.U. states are also NATO members, including about 95 percent of E.U. citizens, and NATO has its own requirements for new military spending. European states are discussing what they can propose to Mr. Trump at the next NATO summit in June, in The Hague, that will ensure American cooperation in any transition.

But while Trump officials have privately reassured Europeans that the U.S. president supports NATO, will retain the American nuclear umbrella over Europe and remains committed to collective defense, Mr. Trump’s views are famously changeable, and he persists in viewing NATO as a club where members pay for American protection.

In his first term, he often mused about leaving NATO while saying the United States will defend only countries that pay enough for defense. This month, he repeated that warning. He has demanded that NATO members pay up to 5 percent of gross domestic product on defense, significantly more than the United States, which spends about 3.4 percent of G.D.P. on its global military.

NATO officials want to set a new spending goal at the summit in June, but one closer to 3.5 percent of G.D.P., up from 2 percent now.

In response, Sweden’s center-right government announced plans on Wednesday to increase defense spending to 3.5 percent of G.D.P. by 2030, an ambitious goal. Sweden is currently projected to spend 2.4 percent this year.

Reinforcing concerns in Europe that the United States may no longer be a reliable partner was the extraordinary discussion among top Trump administration officials of the American strike on Yemen, revealed by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, who was inadvertently added to the group chat on the messaging app Signal.

The discussion was replete with comments like this one from Vice President JD Vance: “I just hate bailing out the Europeans again.” And there were boastful messages about finding a way to get Europe to pay for the operation — but nothing about China, which benefits hugely from the trade passing through the straits near Yemen, including much of its oil imports and its exports to Europe.

Mr. Trump’s sudden suggestion last week that a future American fighter plane might be sold to allies in a downgraded version has also reinforced these concerns.

Prompted by Mr. Trump’s stated intention to leave Ukraine’s defense to Europe, Britain and France are working on a proposal for a European “reassurance force” to be on the ground in Ukraine once a peace settlement is reached between Kyiv and Moscow, if one ever is. But so far, no other E.U. country has publicly volunteered to serve in such a force, which is largely undefined and unfinanced, and which Russia has consistently rejected.

After meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Paris on Wednesday evening, Mr. Macron said that Europe would remain steadfast in its commitment to Ukraine and announced France would provide the country 2 billion euros in military aid. Mr. Macron described the funds as “additional,” though it is unclear if the figure included already announced aid.

The meeting between Mr. Macron and Mr. Zelensky came ahead of a broader “coalition of the willing” gathering in Paris on Thursday, mostly including nearly 30 European heads of state and government.

Mr. Macron said that any European reassurance force would be discussed, but he reiterated that it would not be on the front lines of the conflict and would not be tasked with monitoring or enforcing a cease-fire — a job that he suggested could fall to United Nations peacekeepers. Instead, he said, a reassurance force of European troops would be based further within Ukraine to deter Russia and help train and support Ukrainian forces.

But Mr. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, called the idea “simplistic” and “a posture and a pose.”

Efforts at creating a cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine continued, with the announcement on Tuesday that the two countries had agreed to stop attacks on ships in the Black Sea. But even that agreement was subject to a Russian demand that Western countries drop restrictions on Russian agricultural exports.

Ms. von der Leyen talks of making Ukraine “a steel porcupine,” too difficult for Russia to swallow in the future, an echo of an early plan for Ukrainian defense drafted by a former NATO secretary general, Anders Rasmussen.

But even a steel porcupine is not a security guarantee, and it implies an endless commitment to supporting Ukraine.

Prime Minister Bart De Wever of Belgium summed up the European problem nicely last week. He praised Mr. Macron for drumming up a “coalition of the willing” to boost military aid for Ukraine as U.S. support dwindles. But he said he had pleaded for a bit more structure in the group.

“We are willing — but willing to do what, exactly?” he asked.

​Ukraine thought it had a deal in place to suspend the fighting in the Black Sea immediately. Russia said economic sanctions would need to be lifted first. And the United States didn’t address the question of timing at all, merely repeating President Trump’s broad demand that the killing stop.

The conflicting statements released this week after midlevel cease-fire negotiations in Saudi Arabia were the latest sign of a chaotic process in which, analysts and experts said, the Kremlin appears to be playing for time and getting the upper hand.

The Trump administration has set out to secure a series of limited cease-fire deals, arguing that the modest agreements will pave the way for a broader truce and eventually a peace deal to end the conflict. But so far, these incremental deals have largely been a way for Russia to win concessions from Ukraine and good will from a White House eager to be seen as the peacemaker.

On Tuesday, Moscow said it would agree to the Black Sea truce only if sanctions on its state agriculture bank, Rosselkhozbank, and other restrictions were lifted. If Washington agrees to those terms and pressures European allies to do the same, the proposed Black Sea deal would benefit Moscow more than Kyiv, experts said.

The Black Sea negotiations followed another limited agreement brokered by Washington: a 30-day halt in strikes by Russia and Ukraine against energy targets. That deal also benefits Moscow, given the extensive damage Ukrainian strikes have inflicted on oil and gas installations across Russia, and it came with no clear enforcement mechanism. Both sides quickly accused each other of continuing such strikes.

And earlier this month, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia effectively rejected a proposal for an overall 30-day cease-fire brokered by Washington and Kyiv. Mr. Putin set out conditions, including a freeze on Ukrainian personnel recruitment, military training and arms imports, that would have made Kyiv particularly vulnerable were fighting to resume.

“It seems clear that the Russians are stalling, and they are very good at that,” said Daniel Fried, a former top U.S. diplomat and fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, who has negotiated with the Russians in the past. “The Russians are drawing this out and loading it with conditions to send us down a rabbit hole of complexity.”

Mr. Trump on Tuesday acknowledged the Russian tactic without criticism. He thinks Moscow wants to see an end to the war, he said, “but it could be that they’re dragging their feet.”

He then recalled taking the same approach himself in business negotiations in the past, when he didn’t want to sign a contract but wanted to “sort of stay in the game.”

For Russia, staying in the talks has meant raising a series of demands, however unlikely some of them are to be met. Russia framed the proposed Black Sea deal as a way to revive a 2022 U.N.-backed deal that gave it some control over commercial shipping through the sea.

That deal allowed Ukraine to export its grain through an agreed-upon shipping corridor, but also permitted Russia to inspect all commercial ships to ensure they did not carry weapons. Experts say Russia exploited that provision to stall Ukrainian seaborne exports.

After the deal collapsed in 2023, Ukraine successfully pushed the Russian Navy out of the western Black Sea to secure its own shipping corridor. The operation was so successful that seaborne grain exports returned to near-prewar levels, above the levels reached during the time of the U.N.-backed deal.

Against that backdrop, Kyiv has no interest in acceding to Moscow’s demands, experts say. Mr. Fried noted that for a Black Sea deal to be seen as balanced, it would need to include a clear benefit to Kyiv, such as a commitment by the Russians to halt attacks on the southern port of Odesa or on all Ukrainian agriculture export facilities.

The White House did not explicitly refer to such a commitment in its statements on Tuesday, which referred only to the elimination of “the use of force” in the Black Sea.

The conditions set out by the Kremlin on Tuesday also introduced the possibility of the United States lifting sanctions as a precondition to Russian action — a move European Union leaders firmly oppose. Asked about the Black Sea negotiations on Wednesday, President Emmanuel Macron of France said that Mr. Trump’s concept of “peace through strength” should not “begin with removing sanctions before having received or verified anything.”

Mr. Fried said he saw no substantive concession on the Russian side that would merit such a step.

“The Russians have managed to put this on the agenda, which means they have injected sanctions lifting as part of the early negotiating process,” Mr. Fried said. “Why is it in our interest to do that? What is the reciprocal move we are going to get from the Russians?”

Mr. Trump has threatened Russia with consequences if it doesn’t pursue peace, but his administration so far hasn’t followed through. It has instead accepted and repeated Mr. Putin’s statements about wanting to end the conflict and talking up the possibilities of a renewed era of cooperation with Russia.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Tuesday that Moscow’s conditions on the Black Sea deal were further evidence of the Kremlin seeking more concessions while deceiving the United States about its real intentions.

Mr. Putin has shown few signs of backing off his aim to subdue Ukraine as a satellite nation under Russia’s thumb. He has regularly said that Russian forces are on the front foot on the battlefield and that a cease-fire would only benefit Kyiv. He does, however, want to continue the Trump administration’s rapid rapprochement with Moscow, pointing to joint economic projects that Russia and the United States could pursue.

The conditions Moscow set on the Black Sea agreement have little chance of being met anytime soon. They included a demand to reconnect the Russian state agriculture bank to the international payment system known as Swift. That would require the cooperation of European countries that have been cut out of the talks.

Alexander Kolyandr, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said removing sanctions from the bank would bring significant benefit to Moscow.

“They definitely want a large state-owned bank outside of the sanctions, because the moment you have a financially kosher bank, you can do whatever you want,” he said. “They can clear transactions; they can move money between countries; they can pay for imports in dollars, which is always cheaper; and they can receive dollars for their exports.”

Even if Moscow, Washington and Kyiv resolve the differences in their statements on the Black Sea deal, the discussed cease-fire would do little more than enshrine the status quo, said Andrey Sizov, director of Sovecon, an agriculture market analysis firm.

Mr. Sizov noted that Ukraine has been exporting grain successfully through the Black Sea since late 2023, and Russia has been exporting both oil and grain, even though restrictions have made the activity more expensive for Moscow. He sees the current talks as a formalization of the existing arrangement.

“It’s not a step ahead,” he said. “In my view, it shows that progress toward a full truce, toward a full cease-fire, is quite limited, if any.”

Constant Méheut contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president, will face trial on charges that he oversaw a vast scheme to cling to power after losing the 2022 elections, including an attempt to overturn the vote and a plot to assassinate the nation’s president-elect, the country’s Supreme Court decided on Wednesday.

The ruling marks a significant effort to hold Mr. Bolsonaro accountable for accusations that he sought to effectively dismantle Brazil’s democracy by orchestrating a broad plan to stage a coup.

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the case, said in explaining his decision that there was no doubt Mr. Bolsonaro “knew, handled and discussed” plans for a coup.

Mr. Bolsonaro and seven members of his inner circle, including his running mate and a former spy chief, will be tried on charges filed by prosecutors last month of “violent abolition of the democratic rule of law” and “coup d’état,” among other crimes.

In a surprise move, Mr. Bolsonaro attended the first day of the two-day hearing alongside his lawyers but remained silent.

Mr. Bolsonaro, in a statement, said the court’s decision was politically motivated, calling it an attempt to “silence the opposition.”

Mr. Bolsonaro, who has been barred from running for office until 2030, added that the president should be chosen by Brazilians “at the ballot box, not a handful of judges in a courtroom.”

Celso Sanchez Vilardi, one of Mr. Bolsonaro’s lawyers, did not deny the existence of a coup plot, calling the details of the plan “very serious” in his argument before the high court. But he insisted that there was no link between Mr. Bolsonaro and the scheme.

“Bolsonaro is the most investigated president in the country’s history,” Mr. Vilardi told the court. “Absolutely nothing has been found.”

The five-justice Supreme Court panel voted unanimously to move forward with a trial.

The trial, which has yet to be scheduled, is the fruit of a sweeping two-year investigation in which the police raided homes and offices, arrested people close to Mr. Bolsonaro and secured a key confession from a senior aide to the former president.

In a 884-page report unsealed last November, investigators accused Mr. Bolsonaro of directing and approving a detailed plot, which included plans to annul the election results, disband courts, grant special powers to the military and poison President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva days before he was to take office.

Justice Moraes, who is seen by the far-right as an opponent of Mr. Bolsonaro, was himself the target of assassination plans revealed by the coup probe.

The investigation revealed how close Brazil came to returning to a military dictatorship nearly four decades into its history as a modern democracy.

The scheme, according to prosecutors, also included sowing unfounded doubts about the reliability of Brazil’s electronic voting machines in the months leading up to the 2022 vote. Mr. Bolsonaro claimed he could only lose if the election were rigged in his opponent’s favor.

After Mr. Bolsonaro lost, he and his allies encouraged right-wing protesters to camp out in front of military barracks across the nation, demanding that the army overturn the results. A week after Mr. Lula took office, many of those protesters stormed Brazil’s halls of power in an episode that echoed the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by supporters of President Trump.

Experts say it is unlikely that Mr. Bolsonaro will be arrested ahead of his trial, unless Justice Moraes deems him to be a flight risk.

After the police searched Mr. Bolsonaro’s home and seized his passport last year, he spent two nights in the Hungarian Embassy in Brazil, raising questions over whether he had sought to use his ties with a fellow right-wing leader as leverage to evade possible arrest.

If convicted, Mr. Bolsonaro could face 12 to 40 years in prison, according to the indictment, though political analysts expect any sentence to be shorter. A conviction would also make him permanently ineligible to run for office under current law.

In an attempt to save Mr. Bolsonaro’s political future, lawmakers allied with the former president have tried to amend a Brazilian law that prohibits convicted criminals from running for office.

They have also pushed for a new bill that would pardon those convicted over the Jan. 8, 2023 insurrection in Brazil’s capital, which could also benefit Mr. Bolsonaro’s efforts to run again.

Mr. Bolsonaro also appears to be placing a bet on support from Mr. Trump. Last week, one of Mr. Bolsonaro’s sons said that he plans to seek political asylum in the United States and lobby the Trump administration to pressure Brazilian authorities to halt what he calls the unjust pursuit of his father.

Last month, just hours after Brazilian prosecutors indicted Mr. Bolsonaro, Mr. Trump’s media company sued Justice Moraes, the judge overseeing the case, in U.S. federal court, accusing him of illegally censoring right-wing voices on social media.