Analysis of: EU says Russia wants to ‘freeze Ukraine’ ahead of rare trilateral talks with US – Europe live
The Guardian | January 23, 2026
TL;DR
US, Ukraine, and Russia hold trilateral talks while Europe scrambles to provide generators as Russia weaponizes winter. The crisis exposes inter-imperialist rivalry over resources and territory while working people freeze.
The convergence of Ukraine peace negotiations, the Greenland territorial dispute, and Europe's energy crisis reveals the intensifying contradictions within the global imperialist order. As US, Ukrainian, and Russian delegations meet in Abu Dhabi, the fundamental question of territorial control—particularly over the resource-rich Donbas region—remains unresolved. This is not merely a dispute between nation-states but a struggle over zones of capital accumulation, energy resources, and strategic military positioning in an era of declining US hegemony. The article inadvertently exposes how working-class populations bear the material costs of these inter-imperialist conflicts. While diplomats negotiate in luxury venues, hundreds of thousands of Kyiv residents flee their homes as temperatures plunge below -10°C, their energy infrastructure deliberately targeted by Russian strikes. The EU's response—sending generators—amounts to humanitarian triage rather than structural resolution. Meanwhile, Trump's Greenland obsession and dismissive comments about NATO allies' Afghanistan sacrifices reveal the transactional nature of US imperial relationships, where 'alliance' means subordination to American interests. The simultaneous crises demonstrate capitalism's tendency toward geopolitical fragmentation during periods of systemic crisis. Denmark preparing troops for potential US military action against Greenland—a NATO ally—represents a qualitative shift in Atlantic relations. The material stakes are clear: Arctic resources, military positioning, and control over emerging shipping routes as climate change opens new territories for exploitation. These are not aberrations but logical expressions of capitalist competition reaching its limits within existing territorial arrangements.
Class Dynamics
Actors: US capitalist state (Trump administration), Russian capitalist state (Putin government), Ukrainian state apparatus, European Union as collective capitalist bloc, NATO as military arm of Western capital, Ukrainian working class and civilians, Polish working class (fundraising for Ukraine), Greenlandic Indigenous population, Danish military personnel, Fallen NATO soldiers' families
Beneficiaries: US military-industrial complex, Energy corporations benefiting from supply disruptions, Russian oligarchy maintaining territorial gains, Arms manufacturers across all sides, Generator and emergency equipment suppliers
Harmed Parties: Ukrainian civilians facing energy blackouts and displacement, Working-class soldiers from all NATO countries, Greenlandic people facing imperial pressure, European working classes facing economic instability, Families of fallen soldiers whose sacrifice is politically dismissed
The trilateral talks demonstrate a hierarchy where the US positions itself as arbiter while extracting concessions from both sides. Russia maintains leverage through continued military pressure and energy warfare. Ukraine's negotiating position depends entirely on Western support, revealing its subordinate position in the imperialist chain. European states, despite economic power, demonstrate political weakness—unable to independently resolve either the Ukraine crisis or resist US pressure on Greenland. The working classes of all nations have no seat at the negotiating table despite bearing the costs.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Control over Ukrainian agricultural land and mineral resources in Donbas, Arctic resource extraction rights (oil, gas, rare minerals), European energy dependency and infrastructure vulnerability, Military industrial production driving war economy, Strategic shipping route control as Arctic ice melts, Reconstruction contracts and debt obligations for post-war Ukraine
The conflict centers on which bloc of capital will control productive assets in Ukraine's industrial east and the Arctic's extractive potential. Russia's energy warfare—destroying Ukraine's infrastructure—represents deliberate deindustrialization to weaken a rival's productive capacity. The EU's generator shipments, while humanitarian, also serve to maintain Ukraine as a functioning economic space for Western capital penetration. The mention of 'postwar recovery' and 'economic cooperation' signals the coming privatization wave that typically follows such conflicts.
Resources at Stake: Donbas industrial capacity and mineral wealth, Ukrainian agricultural land (among world's most fertile), Greenland's rare earth minerals and oil reserves, Arctic shipping routes, European energy supply chains, Military positioning for future conflicts
Historical Context
Precedents: 19th century 'Great Game' over Central Asian territory, Post-WWI territorial settlements and their instabilities, Cold War proxy conflicts over spheres of influence, Danish colonial history in Greenland, US territorial acquisitions (Alaska, Puerto Rico, Hawaii), NATO's post-Cold War eastward expansion
This represents a crisis of the post-Cold War unipolar order as declining US hegemony faces challenges from both rival powers (Russia, China) and former subordinates (EU wavering on Atlantic alignment). The scramble for Arctic resources mirrors 19th-century colonial partition of Africa—a new frontier for capital accumulation as traditional markets saturate. Trump's explicit transactionalism strips away the ideological veneer of 'rules-based order,' revealing naked inter-imperialist competition that was always the substance beneath liberal internationalist form.
Contradictions
Primary: The contradiction between the US need for European allies against Russia/China and its simultaneous treatment of those allies as subordinates to be bullied (Greenland) and exploited (dismissing NATO contributions). This makes stable Western bloc unity increasingly difficult to maintain.
Secondary: Russia demands 'denazification' while conducting war that kills Ukrainian civilians, EU claims to defend sovereignty while having enabled NATO expansion that triggered conflict, Trump seeks 'peace deal' while his policies destabilize the alliance system needed to enforce any settlement, Ukraine fights for sovereignty while becoming increasingly dependent on US/EU patronage, Denmark prepares to defend against its own alliance partner
The contradictions point toward either: (1) a temporary settlement that freezes conflict lines while underlying tensions remain, creating conditions for future resumption; (2) accelerated fragmentation of the Western bloc as European states seek autonomous arrangements with both US and Russia; or (3) continued grinding conflict as no party can achieve decisive victory. The working-class path—international solidarity against all ruling classes prosecuting the war—remains underdeveloped but is the only resolution that addresses root causes.
Global Interconnections
This crisis cannot be understood outside the broader context of declining US hegemony and the transition toward a multipolar capitalist world order. The simultaneity of Ukraine negotiations and Greenland tensions reveals how the US attempts to compensate for relative decline through more aggressive assertion of imperial prerogatives, even against allies. This echoes patterns from previous hegemonic transitions—Britain's increasingly erratic behavior in the early 20th century as US power rose. The energy warfare dimension connects to global climate crisis: as fossil fuel extraction becomes both more contested and more destructive, control over remaining reserves intensifies conflict. Greenland's significance stems precisely from climate change opening new extraction and shipping possibilities. The Arctic is becoming a new zone of inter-imperialist rivalry precisely because the climate crisis—itself produced by capitalist accumulation—creates new territories for that same accumulation to exploit.
Conclusion
The trilateral talks represent not peace-making but the negotiation of a new phase of conflict. Whatever settlement emerges will reflect the temporary balance of forces between imperialist powers, not the interests of working people in any country. The task for the international working class is to oppose all ruling classes involved—Russian, American, European—while building solidarity with workers and civilians who bear the costs of elite competition. The Danish workers fundraising for Ukrainian generators show one form of genuine internationalism, but this must develop into political opposition to the war system itself. The contradictions accumulating within the Western alliance and between major powers create openings for such politics, but only if workers refuse the nationalist framing that assigns them to 'sides' in a conflict between their exploiters.
Suggested Reading
- Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by V.I. Lenin (1917) Lenin's analysis of inter-imperialist rivalry and the territorial division of the world directly illuminates the competition over Ukraine and Greenland as struggles between capitalist blocs for control of resources and strategic positioning.
- The New Imperialism by David Harvey (2003) Harvey's concept of 'accumulation by dispossession' helps explain the coming privatization of Ukrainian assets and the Arctic resource grab as capitalism's need for new frontiers when traditional accumulation stalls.
- The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007) Klein's documentation of how crises enable rapid neoliberal restructuring is essential for understanding the 'postwar recovery' plans for Ukraine and the economic interests driving prolonged conflict.
- The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (1961) Fanon's analysis of colonialism and national liberation illuminates both the Greenlandic situation—Indigenous people caught between imperial powers—and the broader question of genuine sovereignty versus dependence on rival empires.