Europe comes to Zelensky's (and Europe's) defence
Europe's reaction to the televised breakup between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been swift. We will see if it is also effective. The continental leaders have made it visible and ostentatious, together with Zelensky, that if he left the White House crushed on Friday, he was moved and aggrieved on Sunday in London. It is important to note that the welcome was not in Brussels, but in the British capital, always with more ties and in tune with Washington. The United Kingdom of the Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, has led the meeting, together with the French President, Emmanuel Macron. They are the two European nuclear powers, one outside the EU and the other inside. Germany also attended the meeting, although still without the future conservative chancellor at the head. But in this historic crossing, the Germans can also clearly be counted on.
The message coming out of the London meeting is for Trump: either he can count on Europe for a peace agreement that has clear guarantees of security for Ukraine (and for the whole of Eastern Europe) in the face of the Russian threat, or, as Zelensky told him in the Oval Office, an understanding will not be possible. In other words: the American president must decide whether he continues to believe in the transatlantic alliance, with NATO as its spearhead, or whether he abandons his historical partners. And pay attention! This Sunday, Elon Musk defended the US leaving NATO. Trump must also assess to what extent his personal trust in Putin is realistic when there is almost no one else in the democratic West who shares it, not even the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, to whom Trump feels so close. Meloni also supported Zelensky in London.
What Europe has done in this meeting is to close ranks with Zelensky and pass the ball back to Washington. Not by going against the US, but because they are changing their path towards a unilateral peace agreement with Putin with the intention of dragging Zelensky along by force. Both the EU countries and the United Kingdom are willing to increase their military spending, but they would like to continue to count on the participation and complicity of the United States, which is still the world's leading military power. Nobody wants a scenario in which Trump disengages from Europe. And even less so if he does so by endorsing Putin's imperialist Russia. But Trump, imbued with a self-confidence that borders on the grotesque, is proving unpredictable. It is not clear how far he wants to take his. America first. And it is very clear that he is annoyed by the fact that no diplomatic path is laid out for him, and even more so by being contradicted by those who, in their schematic historical dialectic, he considers owe him many favours (and a lot of money). This is what Zelensky did and the result was that he was expelled from the White House. They had summoned him only so that he would sign without saying a word. He did not sign.
Starmer, Macron and the rest of the European leaders hope to make Trump see reason with Ukraine so that he agrees to mediate less in line with Putin and becomes involved in the future security of the continent. The confirmation of a US-Europe break would open an unprecedented scenario in the Western democratic world.
