The best official of the foreign policy for the European Union had a frank Friday of the apparent will of the Trump Administration to give the leader of Russia, Vladimir V. Putin, most of what he wants in Ukraine, even before the negotiations to end the three -year war.
“It’s pacification,” said the official, Kaja Kallas, at the Munich conference on the security conference. “He never worked.”
Mrs. Kallas, a former Estonia Prime Minister, was almost not the only European diplomat who pronounced the word “pacification”, with all her historical resonance, although it was one of the few willing to do it in the register.
It was an almost universal description of the disorganized and often contradictory approach of the Trump administration to the questions that seize the continent: what kind of peace agreement does President Trump have in mind? And will it be done with Mr. Putin above the garments of both the Ukrainians and the Europeans, that Mr. Trump apparently plans to bear the burden of the future security of Ukraine?
After days of speeches and private meetings in Munich, many officials said they were more confused before they had arrived. Declarations made by the Secretary for Defense of the United States, Pete Hegseth, in his first effort to international diplomacy, was in contrast with the declarations made by the vice -president JD Vance, also on his first international company with his inauguration.
And European officials said they had attempted, without success, to extract Mr. Trump’s national security team to make sure that Mr. Putin has not simply used a ceased to reconstruct his tenth military and, in a few years, return To take the rest of Ukraine.
They also claimed to be amazed by the fact that Mr. Trump, who crogified himself in his negotiation skills in the real estate sector, was willing to give up so much leverage before entering the negotiations on the destiny of 233,000 square miles of some of the most agricultural land Precious of Europe and Hotbed of technological innovation.
On Friday afternoon hundreds of participants in the conference blocked themselves in a hotel room to listen to Mr. Vance, expecting that they face these problems in a long -awaited speech. But with amazement of the politicians and officials of the defense and intelligence they had crowded, he mentioned Ukraine once, only in passing, while he confided European leaders for having repressed the speech of right -wing political movements, similar to Sorceress in their country.
He did not offer any road map for negotiations or even any strategic vision of how Europe should appear after the most devastating war on the continent for 80 years. Nor has he promised that Europe or Kiev would have been fundamental in negotiations on the borders of Ukraine and its survival as an independent state.
Later during the day, at the end of a meeting with the president Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine, just before climbing the Air Force Two to return to Washington, Mr. Vance offered a little more, the most wagon of the goals For the next talks with Russia.
“We want the war to end, we want the killing to stop, but we want to achieve lasting and lasting peace, not the type of peace that Eastern Europe will have in conflict only a couple of years at the bottom of the street”, has said.
The last sentence was critical, because many European leaders here said they feared that Mr. Trump wanted an agreement so much – and perhaps the Nobel Peace Prize he said he deserves – that he would agree with the terms that They would have left Ukraine in the cold and allow Russia to reconstruct its devastated forces and attack Ukraine again – and perhaps, later, also Moldova, and even to test NATO in the Baltic nations.
But Mr. Vance deflected all the questions that Russia would be able to retain land that had invaded illegally or how to reach an agreement if Mr. Zelensky was not yet ready to meet with Mr. Putin, who claimed that the ‘Ukraine is not even a true country.
“I want to preserve the option here for negotiators,” said Vance.
He did not say anything about a time sequence for negotiations or if he had revised with Mr. Zelensky, as expected, a Ukrainian plan to give the United States access to some of the minerals of the country’s rare land. This was one of the requests of Mr. Trump continuously support.
Mr. Vance may have said so little because Mr. Hegseth, the secretary of the defense, seemed to have given so much, then went back, and then, on Friday, he blamed the media for having interpreted him badly.
On Wednesday, Mr. Hegseth said that Ukrainians had to understand that they would lose much of their country in Russia as part of any settlement. He added that if an agreement was concluded, no American troops would have taken part in a peace maintenance force in the Ukrainian territory. The Europeans would be standing, they supervise any ceasefire or the formal armistice-with a special force, not born. This status would ensure that if it had been attacked, the United States would not have been attracted to a war to defend its NATO allies.
When his comments were mocked throughout Europe and reported by Mr. Zelensky, he declared that he had not given anything and that only Mr. Trump had the power to decide what he would give up and would not give up. He never talked about what Russia may have to give up in a negotiation – if anything.
Last week, he declared an NATO Foreign Minister, the allies were said that all the options for Ukraine were on the table and that the White House was open to discussions. Now, the issues are less clear, especially after Mr. Trump’s telephone conversation with Mr. Putin at the beginning of this week.
The problem, said the minister, is that the normal mechanism of construction of foreign policy has been deliberately broken, with various officials who appealed to Trump from different points of view. The allies do not have a clear picture of how the decisions are made, the minister said, a change compared to the last 20 years.
And if there is no machine, the allies cannot plan and have a strategy, said the minister, who insisted on anonymity due to the diplomatic practice and the sensitivity of the matter.
The German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baertbock, said that Mr. Trump’s call with Mr. Putin, breaking his isolation, was a surprise for the allies. “This is not how others make foreign policy, but this is now reality,” he said on German public radio.
There is also a growing consensus on the fact that Europe should make a strong counter -offer to Mr. Trump, in particular in support of Ukraine.
“Ukraine has an agency and is resisting the attack,” said Radoslaw Sikorski, Foreign Minister of Poland. “He has allies that they will support him arrive what he can. So it must be included in any negotiation that concerns him. “
Ukraine has a low chance to survive Russia’s assault without US support, Zelensky said in an interview with “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker” of the NBC.
“In all difficult situations, you have a chance. But we will have low possibilities: low possibility of surviving without support of the United States, “he said in an extract released on Friday. The complete interview will be broadcast on Sunday.
Foreign ministers and officials of several European countries – including Great Britain, France and Germany – met in Paris on Wednesday evening and released a declaration by committing further support to Ukraine.
“We can’t wait to discuss the way to go together with our American allies,” he said. “Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations. Ukraine should be provided with strong security guarantees. “