One week after he was roughed up, shaken down and thrown out of the White House, Volodymyr Zelensky finds himself once again among dear friends, not least Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission.
Reassured by strong words when he attended the international security conference in London at the weekend, his presence at the emergency European Summit in Brussels probably helped the 27 national leaders present, albeit some reluctantly, to offer Ukraine more tangible help.
The ReArm Europe project promises to raise €800bn to help President Zelensky and his people to resist the Russian invasion. Moreover, there is agreement on reviving and expanding Europe’s run-down defence industry; and an increasing willingness to seize around €300bn in frozen Russian assets, much of it apparently parked in Brussels, under the very noses of the EU heads of government.
Long an economic giant but a military pygmy, the EU is developing a defence and security “identity” at pace. Whether it delivers the arms and money Kyiv so desperately needs after America abandoned it to its fate will soon be tested.
The danger is that, as so often in the progress of the war, Europe moves too slowly and hesitatingly over lethal assistance, as if conditioned to fear and appease Vladimir Putin. Certainly, there is no easy way for the EU, or the UK for that matter, to replace the $1bn of equipment now being sent back to the US, and still less the loss of American intelligence about Russian manoeuvres.
Sadly, but entirely in keeping with his run of form, President Trump has banned the British from sharing such vital information gained via Washington with Kyiv. The upshot will be more successful Russian aerial attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets – a higher death toll for the victim of aggression.
But there are hopeful signs, too. Also in attendance at the summit, along with Chancellor Olaf Scholz, was Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, who has been the clearest about the reality of the geopolitical shift President Trump has brought about, going beyond the betrayal of Ukraine, grievous as that is, to becoming, at best, a semi-detached, contingent ally of Europe or, at worst, a full-hearted partner of Russia and actively hostile to the continent.
Both parties to the likely German “grand coalition” are committed to ramping up the defence effort and easing its “debt brake”. Mr Merz has said that Europeans should have “no illusions” about Mr Trump – and, after a series of disdainful interventions by members of the Trump administration at the Munich security conference, few would take issue with that.
President Macron of France and the prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, are also standing with Ukraine; Poland has built the largest army in the EU; and from Finland to Romania, there is a shared sense of jeopardy as this new Iron Curtain falls on Eastern Europe. Europeans are traditionally prone to fractious disputation where national interests are at stake – but when national survival is the goal, European unity becomes fairly easy to achieve.
The European Union is not a perfect basis for a European Defence Committee – but it is a start.
Some EU nations are neutral (Ireland, Austria, Malta and Cyprus), while two others are currently too sympathetic to the Kremlin to be reliable (Slovakia and Hungary). Of that pair, plainly Viktor Orban – prime minister of Hungary since 2010 and President Putin’s chief cheerleader – continues to undermine the EU’s efforts to back Ukraine. But the others are willing, and structures are coming into place that bring the UK and Norway into the partnership.
This is the genesis of what Sir Keir Starmer calls the “coalition of the willing”, ready to act as a deterrent force in Ukraine after a peace agreement, and defiantly so in the face of Russian threats. Indeed, Sir Keir has established himself as the nearest thing around to a replacement “leader of the free world”, Donald Trump having abdicated the role.
For all his troubles at home, the prime minister has proved himself a skilful negotiator and a surprisingly successful bridge between Washington and Europe. He has displayed great dexterity in his dealings with world leaders, and it has boosted his image and confounded his critics. A lawyer, it would seem, can be a unifying leader.
So it is Britain’s, and Europe’s, loss that he is not at the table in Brussels, but that also underlines how crucial it is to construct an alliance that extends across Europe and beyond Europe to help protect Ukraine’s sovereignty. As Sir Keir often remarks, this existential effort to rearm and stand up to Russia cannot be confined to the EU, which is forced to proceed at the pace of its slowest member. No prizes for guessing that the leader most dragging his feet resides in Budapest.
Sir Keir has assembled around 20 countries interested in forming a “coalition of the willing” to support Ukraine after any ceasefire, European officials said on Thursday. The group of countries, said to be “largely European and Commonwealth partners”, held talks as frantic transatlantic discussions took place to try to secure a truce in Ukraine’s war with Russia.
But in the short run, President Macron and Sir Keir are right – and have no alternative – to somehow try to keep America attached to the Atlantic Alliance, and away from aiding and abetting the Kremlin. Coaxing President Trump to restate a genuine commitment to Nato’s Article 5 – the “one for all, and all for one” clause – is essential to the security of Europe, even on the most optimistic reading of the prospects for a European Defence Union or European Treaty Organisation.
But, deliberately or otherwise, President Trump and President Putin have become the unlikely architects of the next steps to build “an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe” – and that very much now includes the British.
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