🇺🇦The Paris Summits on Ukraine's future
Europe's future hangs in the balance, but what has happened with Emmanuel Macron's Paris Summits on Ukraine? And what is being decided?
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Following the chaotic end to last week where the American administration announced it would negotiate the end of the Russian invasion of Ukraine without Ukraine, effectively declared war on European liberalism, and happened to announce it may pull troops out of the Baltics, things started looking pretty rough for European leaders who had ignored French warnings for decades.
The Americans went as far as to dictate Ukraine’s NATO and EU membership to it, whilst announcing that European security was no longer a priority for the US and that the administration was less concerned by Russia, but by “the threat from within [Europe]”
French President Emmanuel Macron therefore called an emergency meeting in Paris to discuss how to respond.
Quick summary from last week’s dispatch here:
What stood out in all of this was that the French President was making major moves, and calling what were effectively reduced EU summits with the more trusted, pro-European actors, and left the less trusted, pro-Russian states such as Hungary and Slovakia out in the cold.
Not European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen or European Council President António Costa, who typically call these meetings in their roles as Institutional leaders within the EU.
The Paris Summits
The first meeting included France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark, the EU Institutions, and NATO, and was focused on how to react to Trumps abandonment of Ukraine, how to maximise EU support for Kyiv, what security guarantees could be given, as well as how Europe could guarantee it’s own security.
One of the most contentious points, according to reports, was putting boots on the European boots on the ground in Ukraine, with France and the United Kingdom being fully open to the idea, but there being major hesitancy from Poland and Italy.
Immediately after the end of this meeting, Macron quickly made successive calls to President Trump and President Zelenskyy to follow up and attempt to apply the weight of the European Union to the situation.
This was a quick return to a diplomatic leadership role that he had held not too long ago, but which he lost following his catastrophic election gambit in June 2024, reducing the political power of his party, Renaissance, and unleashing nine months of political paralysis.
During these calls, he argued aggressively against any ceasefire agreement that would leave out the Ukrainians and Europeans, but somehow include Saudi Arabia. With leaders moving to increase their defence investments and general war readiness, Macron called for “Decisions, actions, consistency” in a tweet.
“After bringing together several European leaders, I have just spoken to President Trump, and then to President Zelensky.
We want a solid and lasting peace in Ukraine. To this end, Russia must cease its aggression, and this must be accompanied by strong, credible security guarantees for the Ukrainians. Otherwise, we run the risk of seeing this ceasefire end up like the Minsk agreements.
We're going to work on this with all the Europeans, Americans and Ukrainians. That's the key.
We are convinced that Europeans will have to invest better, more and together in their security and defense, now and in the future.
To achieve this, Europeans want to accelerate the implementation of their own agenda for sovereignty, security and competitiveness. Work will continue on the basis of the European Commission's proposals, both on support for Ukraine and on development and investment in our defense. This agenda, defined in 2022 at the Versailles Summit, we just have to get on with it. Decisions, actions, coherence. Quickly.
I'll be continuing these discussions over the next few days.”
And continue these discussions he did, rapidly announcing a second more enlarged meeting, adding several other major European actors, as well as Canada, Iceland and Norway, continuing to bypass the European Union in an attempt to create a durable alliance that would counteract the American betrayal.
One key thing to keep in mind is that all of those who were left out of the meeting today were either those considered to be compromised by their proximity to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, or those who stood by neutral positions
This second summit focused, similarly, on how the European states, Canada, and NATO could ensure that Ukraine would be able to continue surviving the Russian invasion, for Ukraine to not find itself dismembered in a Russo-American imperialist orgy, and for any ceasefire to lead to durable peace that is backed by serious security guarantees that don’t hamstring Ukraine.
Discussions of European boots on the ground, after the collapse of discussions in the first summit, didn’t come up.
“I've just had another long conversation with several colleagues from the European Union, as well as Canada, Iceland and Norway.
The position of France and its partners is clear and united.
We want a lasting and solid peace in Ukraine.
We stand by Ukraine and will shoulder all our responsibilities to ensure peace and security in Europe. This is France's fundamental interest, and I am its guarantor.
We share the objective, which is also that of President @realDonaldTrump to put an end to the war of aggression waged by Russia for nearly three years.
Our efforts for peace will continue to respect the following principles, in our own interest:
→ Ukraine must always be involved and its rights respected.
→ Peace must be sustainable and accompanied by robust and credible guarantees.
→ The security concerns of Europeans must be taken into account.
We are convinced of the need to increase our defense and security spending and capabilities for Europe and each of our countries. Decisions will be taken in the days and weeks ahead.”
All of this seems to be serious, with Ursula von der Leyen having announced several initiatives to unblock funding for the member state militaries, and ‘Super’ Mario Draghi, the hero of the ECB and the Eurozone crisis, having stood up and uncharacteristically shouted at the European Parliament to “do something” to save the Union.
And yet, the biggest issue standing ahead of everyone is, as always, the American President.
Donald Trump targets Zelenskyy
With all of this going on, and with our leaders scrambling to find a solution to the unravelling chaos, American President Trump has chosen to spend his time bullying Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
For the back story: Donald Trump made entirely incorrect claims on Tuesday during a rambling speech, claiming that Ukraine had started the Russian Invasion, that Zelenskyy was avoiding an election because he had approval ratings of 4% (Which are actually in the 57% range), and that the US gives more to Ukraine than Europe.
For more fact-checking, read this Guardian article here.
Naturally, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy wasn’t going to just accept this, even if he chose to respond with more grace than the American president deserves:
“Unfortunately, President Trump – I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us – unfortunately lives in this disinformation space,”
Now, this is entirely true, and you see regular examples of Donald Trump and his acolytes parroting Russian disinformation and misinformation points with reckless abandon.
However, that doesn’t prevent him from taking the truth too hard, so Donald Trump decided to have a hell of a tantrum in response, repeat the false claims, and go as far as to call Zelenskyy “a dictator” in a rambling post on Truth Social
This is, admittedly, one of the most vile things to come out of anyone’s mouth on the topic of Ukraine, and yet this isn’t the worst part of this.
Donald Trump has not said a single negative thing towards the man who started this war, or any of the people supporting this, and seems hell-bent on receiving as much praise from the Kremlin as he possibly can.
Donald Trump is hell-bent on getting out of a war as quickly as possible, pretending that crates and crates of American dollars are being shipped over there, when the majority of the “money” being sent to Ukraine is, in fact, old military equipment and newer equipment that is produced in the United States and built by Americans, creating jobs and tax revenue across the country.
But the most evil thing about this isn’t the falsehoods, the lies, and the betrayal of an ally, or anything of the sort.
It’s that Donald Trump and his friends have seen the war crimes being committed, the men, women, and children being tortured and murdered freely for years, bombed in their homes if not dragged out of them.
And he does not care.
Though, after all of this, I think that Winston Churchill will have the last statement on this unravelling mess of a scenario, with words that were initially uttered with contempt to Neville Chamberlain, and which ring true for Donald J. Trump:
“You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.”
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Excellent. Speaking the fact based truth. Thank you.
Trump and his acolytes have picked their side. It's not Europe and it's not freedom. They've chosen dishonour. But at least now it's very clear that the initial hopes that Trump will work in Ukraine's interest as well as his own can be dismissed. Macron is taking the lead where before, others, Scholz in particluar, have relied on the Americans.
Europe must now work with the remaining democratic countries around the world to strengthen an alliance that doesn't depend on the States. It may sound daunting, but there will also be a a very significant number of USA citizens who'll support the efforts to stop Russia and Trump from carving up the world, as that's where they're heading, it would seem to me.
It's clearly a huge mess, alliances are breaking and new ones being formed. I fear Ukraine's problems are only spreading, as Zelensky warned everyone about from almost the very beginning.