Ukraine peace talks: Europe’s seat at the table in doubt

It took an hour and a half to bulldoze three years of unity.

With his “highly productive” phone call with Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump has cast aside the West’s rules of procedure to propose himself as the sole intermediary who can possibly bring Russia and Ukraine to the table.

“We have agreed to have our respective teams start negotiations immediately,” Trump wrote on social media. The tone of his post was so flattering that the reader could not tell which country was invading which.

After the phone call, a reporter asked the American president if he considered Ukraine an “equal member” of the peace process. Trump demurred and said: “It’s an interesting question. I think they have to make peace. Their people are being killed.”

“That was not a good war to go into,” he added, without saying who went in first.

Trump’s startling comments were preceded by equally alarming remarks from his Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth, who flat-out dismissed Ukraine’s desired return to pre-2014 borders and accession into NATO as “unrealistic” goals that should not be part of any settlement with Russia to achieve a “durable peace”.

Hegseth also ruled out providing any peacekeeping mission with protection under NATO’s Article 5 of collective defence, the alliance’s most powerful deterrence, effectively making it impossible for any Western country to commit troops in the future.

In Europe, the succession of announcements hit like a whiplash.

For the past three years, European nations have striven to build a unified front against Putin’s forceful attempt to redesign the continent’s map. Despite multiple hiccups along the road – and quite a few veto threats – Europe succeeded in closing ranks and maintaining a consistent and predictable policy. On Russia, pressure through sanctions and diplomatic isolation. For Ukraine, support through financial and military aid.

Brussels took it further when it granted Ukraine candidate status to join the European Union, weaving a deeper, closer bond between the bloc and the war-torn country. Ukraine’s fate became intertwined with the EU – and vice versa.

“Putin is trying harder than ever to win this war on the ground. His goal remains Ukraine’s capitulation,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said earlier this month, evoking a theme that has become a leitmotiv of her interventions.

“It is not only the destiny of Ukraine that is at stake. It is Europe’s destiny.”

But now, after one phone call, Europe’s fate is hanging in the balance.

By positioning himself as the sole – emphasis on sole – broker between Russia and Ukraine, Trump is removing Europe, and all his Western partners, from the delicate equation, leaving the entire continent as a mere spectator of the most formidable peace process of the 21st Century. His intention to meet with Putin, one-on-one, in Saudi Arabia, a country miles away from Europe, underlines his priorities.

It was up to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with whom Trump spoke after – not before – his conversation with Putin, to bring the Western coalition back into the conversation. “We believe that America’s strength is sufficient to pressure Russia and Putin into peace, together with us, together with all our partners,” Zelenskyy said.

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Empty chair syndrome

Meanwhile, a dizzy Europe tried to regain its footing.

In a joint statement released on Thursday, almost at midnight, the foreign affairs ministers of France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, together with Kaja Kallas, the EU’s High Representative, vowed to make their voices heard.

“Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations. Ukraine should be provided with strong security guarantees,” they said. “A just and lasting peace in Ukraine is a necessary condition for a strong transatlantic security.”

Despite its good intentions, the statement failed to provide any assurances that anybody from Europe, besides Ukraine, would secure a seat at the table. Trump, it seems, wants a three-man format to lead the entire process, without the involvement of those bordering Russia and fearing they might be the next target of Putin’s neo-imperialism.

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The reason for the exclusion is self-evident: unlike his predecessor, Joe Biden, who took pride in rallying Western allies against the Kremlin, Trump has never displayed any interest in replicating such a template. His “America First” vision and intense dislike for multilateralism are, by nature, incompatible with any effort to sustain a united front.

In fact, shortly after Trump’s inauguration, the US ceded leadership of the Ramstein group, an alliance of over 40 nations that support Ukraine, to Britain.

With Biden in the White House, there was enough Atlantic harmony for Europe to trust that it would be a key actor in the mission of restoring peace in Ukraine and introducing reliable checks to keep Putin’s expansionism under control.

With Trump in the White House, there is just cacophony. By the time Europe makes it through the noise, it might find itself with the short end of the stick, or with no stick at all.

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“The topic does not end with a phone call between the president of the United States and the president of Russia. This is really just the beginning. And I don’t know exactly what will be the next step in the process,” the chief spokesperson of the European Commission said, noting Brussels had no prior knowledge of the phone call.

The spokesperson insisted that “both Ukraine and Europe” belonged at the table but could not guarantee such a seat would be offered.

Lacking a chair has long haunted Europe’s worst nightmares. Give too much to Putin and you will never know where he will stop, Europeans, particularly from the East, have warned, time and time again. Trump’s public admiration for Putin (he once called him a “genius”) and his transactional approach to foreign policy (he has compared the Gaza Strip to a “big real estate site”) have reinforced long-held fears that negotiations, without Europeans in the room, would inevitably result in a deal that would leave Ukraine smaller and weaker and undermine the security architecture of the entire continent.

The fact that Hegseth’s speech at NATO appeared to reveal the White House’s cards ahead of the talks with the Kremlin further compounded the sense of doom.

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Donald Tusk, the outspoken prime minister of Poland, resorted to Trump’s notorious use of the upper case to stress the high stakes at play, incidentally betraying his despair.

“All we need is peace. A JUST PEACE,” Tusk wrote on social media. “Ukraine, Europe and the United States should work on this together. TOGETHER.”