Europe reduced to spectator as Trump and Putin eye Ukraine carve-up in Alaska

A meeting in Alaska on Friday that could shape the future of Europe’s security will be notable for the absence of Europeans. Instead, US President Donald Trump will sit down with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin – a pariah in the West since launching his 2022 invasion of Ukraine – without anyone from Kyiv or the other European capitals present. Fearing Trump could hand Putin a blank cheque to end the war on terms deeply unfavourable to Ukraine, the Europeans have been scrambling to keep the volatile president aligned with them. Leaders from Ukraine and major European powers held a series of calls with Trump and each other on Wednesday as they tried to exert influence on a meeting to which they had not been invited. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz briefed reporters alongside Zelensky following their call with Trump. “There is hope that something is moving. There’s hope that there could be peace in Ukraine,” he said. “We, as Europeans, are doing everything we can to help set the agenda for that meeting. We’re hoping that Donald Trump has success in that meeting in Anchorage.” Leaders were buoyed by Trump’s assertion that the US would punish Russia if Putin did not agree to a ceasefire. They also were encouraged that Trump appeared to accept their red lines of a ceasefire coming before any peace accord, and that Kyiv should be at the table for any discussions about territorial concessions. According to The Wall Street Journal, Kyiv was so pleased with how Trump backed them, its delegation burst into applause. Politico, meanwhile, reported that Trump had expressed support for some level of US security guarantees for Ukraine when the war ends. But beneath the positivity, anxiety remains across Europe that he could just as easily sell Ukraine down the river to seal a quick deal with Russia. “While US-European cooperation is ongoing, it could face greater strain – especially since Europe should have been represented if the summit was to discuss ending the war in Ukraine,” Leo Litra, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said. “In addition, the Russian president may propose measures that benefit Russia but are unacceptable to Ukraine. This would force Ukraine to refuse even a ceasefire deal, potentially portraying it as the party that derailed peace efforts.” Trump has said he will discuss “land swapping” with Putin and has spoken disparagingly of Zelensky’s refusal to countenance such an outcome. “He has approval to go to war and kill everybody but he needs approval to do a land swap. Because there will be some land swapping going on. I know that through Russia and through conversations with everybody,” Trump said earlier this week. French President Emmanuel Macron was among those to push back. “They cannot be discussed without the presence of the Ukrainian president at the table,” he said after the European leaders’ call with Washington. “There are not today, in any serious way, territorial exchange schemes on the table.” Macron added that there was optimism of a “trilateral summit” involving Zelensky being held on European soil in the coming weeks. For many observers, however, Europe’s Alaskan absence is a tragedy of its own making. Sven Biscop, a political scientist at Belgian think tank the Egmont Institute, said the bloc “locked itself into a position without options, because until today, it refused to discuss any other scenario … than complete victory and full liberation of Ukrainian territory”. While Europe was right to paint Putin as “the bad guy in the conflict”, a failure to consider any negotiations with Russia, even as hopes of a Ukrainian victory on the battlefield faded, showed Europe’s “abdication”, he said. “You gave away the initiative and when Trump came, he took it,” Biscop said, adding that a new test for Europe would emerge if the summit tilted the scales further in Russia’s favour. “We have always played realpolitik under American leadership, and now we have to design our own realpolitik, which is partially going against the Americans. That is so new for us that it seems to be very difficult to prepare, to dare assume that risk.” For others, the snub is the result of a series of strategic errors made by Europe since Trump’s return, when it began bending over backwards to keep the US engaged in Ukraine. Fawning scenes at the Nato summit in June were followed by a tougher European stance on China in July, with both developments seen in part as tactics to keep Trump on board. Months of trade negotiations – in which the EU refused to hit back at several tariff threats and hikes from the US – resulted in a roundly criticised deal, signed in Scotland last month. Many were sympathetic to the challenge faced by the European Commission in reaching an accord with Trump, given the noisy fallouts among EU members over the course of talks. But its leader, Ursula von der Leyen, annoyed many by parroting Trump’s language on the “biggest deal ever” and even agreeing with him on the unbalanced nature of transatlantic trade ties, as she signed on for a 15 per cent tariff on EU goods. Like the Nato summit, it was painted by some as a necessary humiliation – von der Leyen and the EU taking one for the team to strengthen Ukraine’s war effort. But if the wheels fall off on Friday, history may remember the last seven months very differently. “They feared the effect of a trade war that their big businesses wanted to avoid at any price. Secondly, they thought that it could lead Donald Trump to give up Ukraine,” former EU trade director Jean-Luc Demarty wrote in an article for online magazine Encompass. “In my view, it is wrong because Donald Trump will give up Ukraine anyway and make a deal with Putin sooner rather than later in spite of the present theatre.”

Europe reduced to spectator as Trump and Putin eye Ukraine carve-up in Alaska

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Alaskan summit has European leaders scrambling to exert their influence on the discussion, in the absence of any seats at the table

Alaskan summit has European leaders scrambling to exert their influence on the discussion, in the absence of any seats at the table