It took longer than expected, but the worst fears about Donald Trump's position on Ukraine have finally come true. Analysts agree that the call the US president made to Vladimir Putin on Wednesday has completely reversed the policies that the allies had had until now and, consequently, has given the Russian leader the victory he had long hoped for. Trump bought his arguments, and even before sitting down at the negotiating table he had already announced that Ukraine would not join NATO and that the borders before 2014 would not return. To what extent Ukraine would be forced to cede territory is not clear, but experts are also clear that Russia will want to keep everything.
The Munich Security Conference, which closes today, has been the great forum where the multiple tensions that now exist between the United States and the European Union have been seen. If Trump initially pushed Volodymyr Zelensky, who is not particularly fond of his administration, into the background, yesterday he also made clear his disdain for the European Union, which, according to Trump's special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, will not participate in the peace talks. This announcement of European exclusion came just the day after the American vice president, JD Vance, attacked European leaders for the cordon sanitaire around the far right, that is, around his own.
Ukraine is not only a real battlefield, but also the scene of Trump and his followers' ideological war against all the values that Europe has defended until now. The moment is crucial, so a strong and swift response would be necessary. However, the problem is that Europe is at a moment of maximum weakness. Germany, the main driving force and pillar of the EU with France, is at the end of an electoral campaign in which the extreme right, which minimizes Nazism, may become the second force. However, it will be the current president, Olaf Scholz, who will still have to lead the response to the aggressive contempt of the Trump administration, so there will be a need for complicity with his foreseeable replacement, Friedrich Merz. For the moment, the responses of most European leaders have been forceful against American contempt, but beyond words, there will have to be action. If the EU supports Ukraine in its demands, it will have to be willing to give it more weapons, money and aid.
Zelensky was clear in his speech in which – as France has always demanded – he asked for a European army. He even allowed himself to ridicule Trump by saying that Putin's flight from "propsAt the May 9 parade in Moscow's Red Square. There is not much left to lose, and its only hope now is to get more European involvement. The context is delicate, but if Europe does not now assert itself and assume the costs at all levels that this entails, it will hardly be able to do so in the future.
