US President Donald Trump’s “lengthy and highly productive” phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin has sparked fears in Europe of a “dirty deal” being struck to end the war in Ukraine on terms favorable to Moscow without Kyiv’s involvement.
President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday said Ukraine would not accept a peace deal negotiated by the United States and Russia alone. He conceded it was “not pleasant” that Trump spoke with Putin before calling Kyiv, calling into doubt the West’s policy of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” that has largely held over three years of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Both Trump and his defense secretary Pete Hegseth have since said they believe negotiations will involve Ukraine, though Trump, when asked by a reporter on Wednesday if he saw Ukraine as an equal partner in peace negotiations responded only “that’s an interesting question.”
Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, warned against a “quick fix” and a “dirty deal” to end the war, saying that Europe and Ukraine must be at the table for talks because no peace deal can be implemented without their involvement. US President Donald Trump’s “lengthy and highly productive” phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin has sparked fears in Europe of a “dirty deal” being struck to end the war in Ukraine on terms favorable to Moscow without Kyiv’s involvement.
For European members of NATO the future suddenly looks a whole lot more uncertain. Since the foundation of the alliance, Europe has relied on the American nuclear umbrella, the deployment of sizable US military contingents in Europe and the vast US defense budget and weapons pipeline.
Trump’s call with Putin, and his subsequent announcement that negotiations would begin immediately on reaching a deal in Ukraine, blindsided European leaders and threatened to leave them with the grunt work of funding and overseeing any settlement.
In other words: Washington will do the deal (and may get paid in rare earth minerals by Ukraine as Trump has demanded), and Europe will pick up the tab. Hegseth, the newly minted US defense secretary told NATO allies in Brussels that European and non-European troops – but not Americans – would have to police any agreement between Ukraine and Russia. There was also a brutal denial of Ukraine’s aspirations to join the alliance. Hegseth said Washington did “not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome.”
A NATO official subsequently briefed that “NATO membership is not necessarily something that needs to be negotiated with Russia. It’s something that’s a decision for allies and that decision has been linked to when the time is right.”
The official insisted that “the alliance’s position has not changed and Ukraine is still on a path to membership.” But production lines, investment in new technology and recruitment do not happen overnight. There’s been intense talk since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began of ramping up defense industries in Europe. But that’s a multi-year process.
The head of French defense giant Dassault, Éric Trappier, said last year that “Europe believes all of a sudden that working on defence is a good thing… Between that realisation and the reality of building a European defense industry it’s going to take many years and even many decades,” he told the Financial Times.
Those words were echoed Thursday by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. “We are not producing enough and this is a collective problem…. Russia is producing in three months in ammunition, but the whole of the alliance is producing in a year.” European weapons manufacturers have also complained about arcane decision-making processes in Brussels, where the European Commission has angled for a much greater role in procurement.
Source: Here
