A group of European leaders convened in Paris for an emergency meeting on Monday, still reeling from a weekend during which their long-standing ability to rely on the United States for support was thrown into question and ahead of a meeting between U.S. and Russian representatives in Saudi Arabia that they were excluded from.
Monday’s emergency meeting, convened by French President Emmanuel Macron, included the leaders of the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Denmark, as well as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. It came close on the heels of the Munich Security Conference, where U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance gave a speech accusing European countries of straying from “democratic values” over their opposition to far-right political parties and what Vance characterized as excessive censorship.
A group of European leaders convened in Paris for an emergency meeting on Monday, still reeling from a weekend during which their long-standing ability to rely on the United States for support was thrown into question and ahead of a meeting between U.S. and Russian representatives in Saudi Arabia that they were excluded from.
Monday’s emergency meeting, convened by French President Emmanuel Macron, included the leaders of the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Denmark, as well as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. It came close on the heels of the Munich Security Conference, where U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance gave a speech accusing European countries of straying from “democratic values” over their opposition to far-right political parties and what Vance characterized as excessive censorship.
His remarks—coupled with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s statement earlier that week that Ukraine’s membership in NATO was not a “realistic” outcome of a potential negotiated settlement to end the war and U.S. President Donald Trump’s unilateral decision to start direct negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the Ukraine war—left many European leaders feeling shocked and sidelined.In Munich, senior European officials stuck to the central message they have been putting forward for months, despite Vance’s speech and the acknowledgment that Europe must contribute more to its own defense. “There will be no peace in Ukraine without Ukraine or Europe,” Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur told Foreign Policy on the sidelines of the conference.
But the Trump administration doesn’t seem to be heeding that message. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, met in the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Tuesday, where the two sides agreed to begin talks to achieve peace in Ukraine and more broadly improve U.S.-Russia relations. No Ukrainian or European representatives were included, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky postponed his own visit to Saudi Arabia scheduled for Wednesday.
“There is now a sort of ideological convergence between Moscow and Washington against Europeans,” said Thomas Gomart, director of the Paris-based think tank Institut Français des Relations Internationales, describing the Trump administration’s stance as a “strategic gift, which has been given to Putin for almost nothing at this stage.”
The problem, even for Europe’s most powerful nations, is that they cannot seem to agree on how to proceed.
Macron, who skipped the Munich Security Conference, has tried to play interlocutor, speaking to Trump before and after Monday’s emergency meeting, when he also spoke to Zelensky. “We will work on this together with all Europeans, Americans, and Ukrainians,” he wrote in a post on X. “This is the key.” France is reportedly planning to host a second meeting on Wednesday with other European nations that weren’t included in Monday’s meeting, as well as North American ally Canada.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer wrote in an op-ed in the Telegraph on Sunday that he would be willing to commit British peacekeeping troops to Ukraine if a peace deal is reached. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, on the other hand, told reporters categorically on Monday that Poland will not send troops to Ukraine, while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz—facing a snap election next week—said it was “inappropriate” to discuss peacekeeping troops before a peace deal is reached.
“For Europeans, there is this idea that if a cease-fire is really implemented, Ukraine should continue to be supported and maybe Europeans should be able to provide security guarantees,” Gomart said. “Having said that, there is deep division among them regarding the security guarantees, and there is also division in terms of what sort of military risk Europeans are ready to take by themselves.”
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