Zelensky's Eurosquad can breathe a sigh of relief
For now
The Eurosquad can breathe a sigh of relief – for now.
The gang of European leaders deftly flattered Donald Trump but carefully outlined their expectations and demands as they steered the freewheeling US President back on course, following his alarming deference to Vladimir Putin in Alaska last week.
President Volodymr Zelensky represented Ukraine with distinction, avoiding a second Oval Office showdown, even joking with the MAGA-supporting reporter who chided him in February for not wearing a suit to the White House.
‘You are in the same suit,’ Zelensky told Brian Glenn, who is also the partner of the firebrand MAGA Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
‘I’ve changed. You have not,’ he said. Even Trump laughed.
Mercifully, Vice-President JD Vance, who started the fight last time, did not speak.
According to the FT, Kyiv came offering a proposal for $100 billion arms deal that would be funded by Europe. The report said half of these funds could go towards making drones, a military technology the US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth wants the Pentagon to turbocharge in producing.
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Zelensky worked in tandem to raise the issue of returning the kidnapped children taken by Russians through artful flattery of Melania Trump.
The First Lady penned a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the topic, which Trump released on the weekend. Zelensky gave Trump a letter from Ukraine’s First Lady, Olena Zelenska, thanking Melania Trump for her advocacy. Trump was grateful and later posted on social media about the topic.
Another sign of progress was that Trump appeared to accept that territorial discussions were for Ukraine and Russia to negotiate. If this holds, this is an important departure from his former position of forcing Ukraine to give up unoccupied land in the Donetsk region to Russia. Ukraine retains control over one-third of the region, but Putin wants it for free and for Trump to force and facilitate the transaction.
The August summit was extraordinary in every sense. European leaders abandoned their summer holidays and rushed to the White House, which had to prepare for hosting seven more world leaders in 48 hours.
Their efforts and very public embrace of Ukraine paid off, but because it is the vacillating Donald Trump, the painstaking advances gained on Monday could evaporate, just as Putin is surely feeling about the victory he pulled off in Alaska on Friday.
Trump appears to crave European flattery and validation, whether he seeks theirs more than Putin’s remains to be seen.
But the test is not nice words said in the East Room or the parading of Ukraine’s wartime leader for the world’s cameras in the Oval Office.
Underneath the warm displays in the White House lies an inherent contradiction within the Trump Administration about the security guarantee that is needed and will be provided to Ukraine.
This guarantee has to be strong enough to deter Russia from attacking Ukraine once more. It cannot be a rinse and repeat of previous, now failed promises and assurances made to Ukraine, such as the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
Italy’s Georgia Meloni has led the charge for an ‘Article-5-model’ guarantee, ‘to be sure that it won’t happen again, which is the precondition for any peace.’
Article 5 is the clause inherent to NATO, which says that an attack on one shall be considered an attack on all.
Given that the Trump Administration has stopped funding military aid for Ukraine, preferring instead to let the Europeans buy weapons on Kyiv’s behalf, it is an enormous leap to expect the United States under MAGA would fight for Ukraine against Putin.
Nevertheless, Trump has been adamant that the United States will provide security guarantees both on his call with European leaders in the lead-up to his meeting with the Eurosquad and in public.
‘We’ll help them out with that, and I think it’s very important, I think it’s very important to get the deal done,’ Trump told reporters while sitting alongside Zelensky.
Asked if he would put US peacekeepers or troops in Ukraine, he said he may let reporters know after his meetings. But there was no definitive military commitment by the time the European leaders were jetting out late Monday evening.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said as he departed: ‘All the details to be hammered out over coming days.’
France’s President Emmanuel Macron, who was one of the first to propose Western troops in Ukraine and a co-author of the Coalition of the Willing, has begun to link the two.
Macron, on NBC, said it represented great progress ‘that the US is willing to be part of this.’
On the weekend, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff boasted that he had secured Putin’s endorsement of this style of security guarantee, and that this was a game-changer.
But for as long as the Trump Administration requires Russia’s veto for what sort of security Ukraine’s allies provide Kyiv, any security guarantee will be fragile.
The Kremlin can easily play spoiler. Trump wants to coordinate a trilateral meeting with Zelensky and Putin as the next step.
Trump broke from his meeting with the European leaders to phone Putin for 40 minutes. Zelensky said Russia had proposed to Trump a bilateral meeting first, which Ukraine would accept.
Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin was lukewarm in its official comments.
Putin’s adviser Yury Ushakov, who was in Alaska, told Russian state media TASS: ‘They discussed the idea of considering the possibility of increasing the level of the Russian and Ukrainian representatives involved in the direct talks.’
‘A diplomatic meeting at the level of leaders is such a step. If the Russian side does not take it, Ukraine will ask the United States to act accordingly,’ Zelensky said.
This scenario would be the real test of Trump’s commitment to brokering peace. The US President has been all talk so far when it comes to using pressure and force on Russia and has veered wildly from being pally with Zelensky to demanding Ukraine cede unoccupied land to Russia.
In the only slightly brittle moment, Trump pushed back on Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz — the last man standing in urging an immediate ceasefire, which was once a key demand of Trump’s.
After Alaska, it has been all but abandoned, meaning Putin has more time to continue murdering and obstructing.
While France is pushing for more US-backed sanctions should Trump’s diplomatic entreaties fail, this theme is also falling away.
Trump, who claimed on the campaign trail that he would end the war within 24 hours, made an interesting admission as he convened the seven leaders, saying that resolving the Ukraine war had proved harder than he thought.
‘I thought this was going to be one of the easier ones; it’s actually one of the most difficult, very complex,’ he said.
Another great danger is that Putin banks on Trump’s short attention span and frustrates the process long enough for the US President to give up altogether.
This is an article first published by The Nightly