European leaders scramble ahead of Trump’s Ukraine summit with Putin
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As U.S. and Russian envoys prepare to begin talks in Saudi Arabia on ending the war in Ukraine, European leaders have called an emergency meeting in Paris after being cut out of the peace negotiations.
The gulf between the U.S. and Europe on the Ukraine war and security issues crystallized for Europeans this past weekend at the Munich Security Conference, says Elie Tenenbaum, head of the Security Studies Center at the French Institute of International Relations.
"Their worst nightmare has come true," he says. "They see that the Trump administration is going to bypass them and try to strong-arm Ukraine in negotiating a deal with Russia to end the war."
Tenenbaum says European leaders were hopeful that the U.S. and Europe could work together under the new Trump administration. But comments last week in Europe by several U.S. officials — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in Brussels, Vice President Vance and special Russia-Ukraine envoy Gen. Keith Kellogg in Munich, and by President Trump himself after an hour-and-a-half call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, have poured cold water on any such hopes.
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"The Europeans now realize they are standing alone," he says.
German Christian Democrat Norbert Röttgen, a longtime advocate for trans-Atlantic alliances, said the Trump administration had in effect declared an ideological war on Europe. "They want to divide us and kill Europe," he told French newspaper Le Monde.
Finnish President Alexander Stubb summed up the situation by quoting a well-known phrase of Soviet leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen," he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded in Munich for Europe to join Ukraine in building a European fighting force "so that Europe's future depends only on Europeans, and decisions about Europe are made in Europe," he said to resounding applause.
"Zelenskyy is saying this is our moment — where we either stand up and fight or we give up and let the Russians and the Americans draw the lines," says Tenenbaum.
Monday's meeting, hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, will be joined by the leaders of Britain, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark, as well as European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.
In an op-ed in British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer wrote that he is ready to send troops to Ukraine to guarantee a peace deal.
At least three big European powers will need to step up to create a real guarantor force, says Tenenbaum.
"What you need is for the U.K. and Poland to be on board along with France. And ideally a fourth country, which could be Germany or Italy," he says.
Tenenbaum says Europeans will have to fight for a place at the negotiating table "to be enough of a troublemaker that the U.S. and Russia realize the process may derail if they're kept out of the room."
Tenenbaum will be looking to see if the Europeans are willing to take some risks and be bold enough to earn a seat at the table.
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