British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced on Sunday that the United Kingdom, France "and other European countries", together with Kiev, will present Donald Trump with a peace plan in the coming days to try to convince him that the United States will ultimately provide security guarantees that will allow for a "lasting peace" in Ukraine.

Europe jumps through the hoop of a Donald Trump more aligned with Moscow than with Kiev. The leaders of more than fifteen countries met in London on Sunday to build a strategy to support Ukraine that would lead to a lasting peace and, in an attempt to involve the United States, they promised a significant increase in the defense budget and to present a plan to President Trump. Without the "accelerated and massive rearmament of the continent" that the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has spoken of, there is practically no chance of obtaining the "security guarantees" that Volodymyr Zelensky is asking for with the support of the United States.

Keir Starmer takes a step forward in his commitment to the European continent and the integrity of Ukraine. Hours before the Informal meeting of European leaders The British Prime Minister, who summoned President Emmanuel Macron to Paris on Monday evening, announced that London could "deploy British troops on the ground, if necessary" to guarantee a "lasting peace" in Ukraine. Under no circumstances would they be there while there was fighting. In a very significant article published in the ultra-conservative daily Daily Telegraph, Very critical and harsh with Starmer's management since he came to power, the Labour leader said: "We are facing a once-in-a-generation moment for the collective security of our continent. This is not just a question about the future of Ukraine, it is also an existential question for the whole of Europe."

French President Emmanuel Macron has summoned European leaders to Paris on Monday for an emergency meeting on Ukraine, after President Donald Trump's special envoy for the war in that country, General Keith Kellogg, announced yesterday, Saturday, within the framework of the Munich Security Conference, that The United States plans to exclude them from peace negotiations to end the conflict. The Elysee Palace has announced that it will be an "informal" meeting. However, it is nonetheless significant because of the speed with which it has been organised and the leaders who will participate.

The idea that history has not ended needs no further elaboration. Neither has history ended, nor do human beings seem ready to break out of the loop of barbarism that they have been perfecting by putting their intelligence – or rather, their technical capacity – at the service of the most refined brutality.

Roman Hryshchuk, 32, is in a basement in Kyiv, protected against a possible attack, as he speaks to ARA by video conference. He is a member of the Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, for one of the capital's ten districts. He is in the same party as Volodymyr Zelensky, Servant of the People, which takes its name from the TV political satire that starred the now president before he made the leap into politics and became the character of the year and perhaps the decade. Hours before the online meeting, Roman Hryshchuk was awoken by the impact of a missile very close to his home.

The purpose of Russian President Vladimir Putin's latest manoeuvres is unclear. He is making it look like he is withdrawing troops from the Ukrainian border in what looks like a new ploy to fool the West. NATO, in fact, does not give any credibility to the Kremlin's information and sees Russia as continuing to build up forces on the border, a move inevitably reminiscent of the beginnings of the two world wars that ravaged the European continent during the 20th century. It is unclear whether Putin is bluffing and does not really intend to invade Ukraine or whether, on the contrary, he is willing to launch a large-scale military operation under the guise of self-defense, even if it is at the price of blowing up his relations with the West.

Kharkiv (Kharkov in Russian) is Ukraine's second largest city, with a metropolitan area of more than 2.3 million inhabitants. An industrial and grey city, located only 45 kilometres from the Russian border, with a Russian-speaking population with Russian cultural roots and close family ties to the other side. It could be one of the first targets should Vladimir Putin finally order an invasion and at the same time the Kremlin's pretext to legitimise the attack: Moscow considers all Russian speakers living in former USSR countries as "fellow countrymen" and says it has to "protect" them, if necessary, militarily. But after eight years of war in the Donbass region, with the front 350 kilometres south of Kharkiv, people have had enough.