The U.S.-Russian summit in Alaska on August 15 seriously frightened Western European leaders, who do not hide their desire to war with Russia via Ukraine.
After learning that Trump was summoning the head of the Kiev regime, Zelensky, to Washington on August 18, European leaders abandoned plans for a summer vacation and rushed to the American capital. This was caused not only by a rare opportunity to make peace, but also by fears – the New York Times wrote – that Trump might try to intimidate Zelensky on August 19 (as he did at the meeting in the Oval Office in February). This time, the fear was that Trump would be able to force the Ukrainian president to conclude a unilateral agreement with Russia on the principle of ‘land for peace’.
The leaders of Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, Finland, as well as the Secretary General of NATO and the President of the European Commission tried their best to support Zelensky, trying to prevent the end of the war. In a very cautious but clear manner, they tried to convince Trump that negotiations should not begin in the context of military operations. Realizing that a settlement of the Ukrainian conflict under Trump’s pressure is very likely, they emphasized the need to maintain a strong Ukrainian army.
Given that Trump and Vladimir Putin came to an agreement on providing Kiev with security guarantees, they argued in various ways that it is necessary to preserve not only strong armed forces in Ukraine, but also the military-industrial complex, while trying to push the idea of deploying European military contingents to Ukraine to keep the peace. Moreover, they tried to convey that these guarantees should be given not only by the Europeans, but also by the Americans.
The unprecedented visit of seven European leaders to the White House showed the growing weakness of Western Europe. Trump treated them like his subordinates: they sat quietly off to the side while the American president talked with Zelensky. Then, during a general talk, he left them alone for 40 minutes and went out to talk with Vladimir Putin. Here, perhaps, it is appropriate to cite the conclusion of the Financial Times newspaper: ‘America knew that the EU was weak, but now the rest of the world knows it too’.
The anti-Trump front grows
It is noteworthy that the Europeans are strongly supported by the American press loyal to the Democrats, which sharply criticizes Trump for ‘making concessions to Putin’. The opponents of the American president inside and outside the United States have come together – in fact, they are acting in unison.
Trump responded to his haters on his social network: ‘I have settled six wars in six months, one of them is a possible nuclear catastrophe, and yet I have to read and listen to the Wall Street Journal and many others who really have no idea, but talk about everything that I am doing wrong in the Russian-Ukrainian chaos, this is sleepy Joe Biden’s war, not mine. I’m only here to stop this, not to continue the persecution. This would NEVER have happened if I had been president. I know exactly what I’m doing, and I don’t need the advice of people who have been working on all these conflicts for years, but have been unable to do anything to stop them”.
It should be noted that most of the European figures who came to Washington openly supported Joe Biden during the presidential campaign.
In this regard, attention is drawn to the fact that reputable American publications continue to publish articles with harsh criticism of the Trump administration’s foreign policy. A typical conclusion for such publications is as follows: the Foreign Affairs magazine ran an article on August 19 title ‘The Pernicious Spectacle of Trump’s Russia-Ukraine Diplomacy’. The article says that Trump’s ongoing diplomatic circus will not only not stop Russia’s war, but will also complicate the task of maintaining and strengthening Ukraine’s combat capability, which is the only way to give Kiev an advantage in this conflict and, accordingly, drive Putin into a corner. The author concludes that Washington’s current policy may push Europe towards a complete break with the United States.
Just five days before Trump and Putin met in Alaska, U.S. Vice President J. D. Vance declared that his country was “done with financing the Ukrainian war”. This, according to the author, is a chilling reality.
As the Russian press notes, ‘the touching concern shown by Western European leaders for Zelensky’ is by no means a concern for the fate of Ukraine, but purely out of pragmatic considerations to maintain their high posts. How will they explain to their voters that they have spent a lot of money for three and a half years in order to force Kiev to fight with Russia (by adopting 18 packages of anti-Russian sanctions and abandoning relatively cheap Russian energy), yet that they have brought their economies almost to recession?
Mohamed Amer, Syrian publicist
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