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      Europeans are right to be angry with Donald Trump, but they should also be furious with themselves | Andrew Rawnsley

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      It was, Sir Keir Starmer told members of his inner circle, one of his most meaningful visits abroad. In the middle of last month, he flew to Kyiv to double-down on the commitment to back Ukraine’s struggle for freedom, a pledge he first made a defining feature of his leadership when Labour was in opposition. Hands were warmly clasped with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wailing air raid sirens greeted a Russian drone attack, financial promises were made, and signatures were inscribed on a 100-year partnership treaty. The prime minister solemnly intoned the western mantra about backing the resistance to Russian tyranny “for as long as it takes” for Ukraine to become “free and thriving once again”.All of which now sounds for the birds, thanks to Donald Trump. It was with his trademark contempt for his country’s traditional allies that the US president blindsided them by announcing that he had initiated peace negotiations with Vladimir Putin over the heads of Ukraine and the European members of Nato. The UK received no more warning of this bombshell than anyone else. So much for the vaunted “special relationship”. The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, then unleashed another punch to the solar plexus of European security by publicly declaring that Ukraine would have to accept the surrender of large chunks of its territory and should forget about becoming a member of Nato. The future defence of Ukraine, he went on to declare, would be down to Europe, because the US wouldn’t be sending any of its troops to sustain a security guarantee.Humiliated and anguished, European leaders are crying “betrayal”. The UK government is not adding its voice to that charge in public, but it privately agrees. There is astonishment that the US president blithely conceded to several Russian demands before negotiations have even begun. “What happened to the Art of the Deal?” asks one flabbergasted minister. There is disgust at the Kremlin’s undisguised glee with what it interprets as a vindication of the barbarity it has inflicted on its neighbour. There is fear of the consequences for the Baltic states and others by rewarding Russian predation. There is horror at Trump’s subsequent suggestion that Putin be invited to rejoin the G7, as if the bloody slate of war crimes perpetrated by the Russians can simply be wiped clean.A hideous idea doing the rounds is that Trump will make a state visit to Moscow timed to coincide with the May Day parade, which celebrates Russia’s military. What a grotesque spectacle: the supposed leader of the free world sitting with the Kremlin’s tyrant watching a march across Red Square by the army that has committed so many atrocities in Ukraine.The biggest surprise is that so many people claim to be surprised. We knew that this US president despises America’s historic allies among the European democracies as he disdains the architecture of international security that his predecessors built. His geopolitics is one in which carnivorous great powers cut deals with each other and the smaller ones fall into line or get crushed underfoot. If you are genuinely shocked by these developments, I can only assume you haven’t been paying much attention.The perils are acute. A dictated peace will embolden Putin and other predators by sanctifying the redrawing of international borders by force. Were the US in concert with Russia to dismember Ukraine over the protests of Kyiv and European capitals, the transatlantic alliance would be mortally fractured.Europeans are right to be angry with Trump, but they should also be furious with themselves. They are to blame for leaving their continent so vulnerable to this danger-infused turn in world events. Trump has always had a point when he’s railed about Uncle Sam being treated as Uncle Sucker and he isn’t the first US president to tell Europe to take more responsibility for its security, even if none before have been so brutal about it. Under the lazy assumption that the US would always ultimately have their backs, European countries have spent too little on their own defence. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was often described as a wake-up call, but too much of Europe responded by hitting the snooze button. Three years on, the latest authoritative report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies finds that Moscow is feeding more resources into its war machine than the entirety of non-Russian Europe is spending on defence. Some frontline Nato countries, notably Poland, have ramped up their military budgets in response to the ravaging of Ukraine. The Poles grasp that the cost of deterrence is worth paying to avoid the far greater price of leaving yourself exposed to devastation. Others are still asleep. Last year, eight of Nato’s 32 members were still failing to meet the modest obligation to spend at least 2% of GDP.It is not that Europe lacks the resources to protect itself without US assistance. Russia’s population is about 144 million. The total population of Nato countries, excluding the US, is over 636 million and their combined economic heft is about 12 times that of Russia. The means are there; what’s been lacking is the will.Defence spending is about to become a lively issue in British politics. George Robertson, defence secretary during Tony Blair’s time at Number 10 and subsequently a secretary general of Nato, has been leading a strategic defence review. Lord Robertson is a shrewd Scot who has overseen a serious piece of work that has come to conclusions which will be jolting. His grim findings have just been delivered to the desks of the defence secretary and the prime minister. They will have landed with a thump.The Robertson review will add further detail to an already alarming picture of escalating threats out-matching inadequate protections. It suggests innovations designed to extract more bangs for taxpayers’ bucks by improving the efficiency of defence spending. It also recommends the reprioritisation of roles and activities. It makes the argument that it’s not just how much you spend that matters, it is also how well you spend. Yet the bluntest message of the review will be that Britain is not adequately resourcing its security. John Healey, the defence secretary, has effectively conceded that already by decrying the “hollowed-out” armed forces left behind by the Tories, a “dire inheritance” which includes the smallest army since the Napoleonic wars and an air force losing pilots faster than it can train replacements.One of Mr Healey’s junior ministers has said that the British army could be wiped out in as little as six months if it engaged in a war on the scale of the conflict in Ukraine. In the realm of cyberwarfare, the head of the National Cyber Security Centre recently warned that Britain’s shields aren’t strong enough to protect from the myriad bad actors who are menacing us.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLabour’s election manifesto made a pledge to get spending up to 2.5% of GDP, but not until some distant and undefined point in the future. At an imminent meeting with the prime minister at Number 10, the heads of the armed forces are expected to argue that there will be more cuts to our enfeebled capability unless they get an additional £10bn a year than has been budgeted for.People in a position to know tell me that Sir Keir is becoming swayed by the case to spend more. For that to happen, three big obstacles will have to be overcome. One is the Treasury, which has ever viewed the MoD as a prodigiously wasteful spender, as it often has been. When money is already tight, Rachel Reeves is going to take a lot of persuading to make a special case of defence. There will be baulking by the many Labour ministers and MPs who will flinch at more money for missiles when it will mean less for public services. There’s also a job of persuasion to do with the British public for whom defence and security has not recently been a priority. At last summer’s election, just one in 50 named it as their top issue in deciding how to vote.It is going to take a lot of effort to shift the dial, but the need to do so is becoming pressing. There’s an old diplomatic saw: “If you’re not at the table, you’ll probably be on the menu.” In this era of international relations, exemplified by Trump seeking to do a strongman-to-strongman deal with Putin to carve up Ukraine, the law of the jungle is beginning to prevail. If the UK and the rest of Europe don’t want their vital interests to be on the menu, we’re going to have to stump up the cost of a seat at the table. More

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      Zelensky Says Ukraine Is Unlikely to Survive the War Without U.S. Support

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      His comments came on the first day of the Munich Security Conference, where anxious European officials had hoped to learn more about U.S. plans to broker peace talks.President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an excerpt from an NBC interview published Friday night that Ukraine had a low chance of surviving Russia’s assault without U.S. support.In the excerpt from “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker,” Mr. Zelensky said: “Probably it will be very, very, very difficult. And of course, in all the difficult situations, you have a chance. But we will have low chance — low chance to survive without support of the United States.”The full interview is set to be broadcast on Sunday, according to NBC.His comments were aired on the first day of the Munich Security Conference, where hundreds of anxious European diplomats and others gathered expecting to hear Vice President JD Vance speak about President Trump’s strategy to broker peace negotiations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine.But Mr. Vance mentioned Ukraine only in passing and offered no road map for negotiations or even any strategic vision of what Europe should look like after the most devastating ground war being waged on the continent in 80 years. Instead, he urged European nations to stop isolating their far-right parties, saying the biggest security threat was the suppression of free speech.Earlier in the week, Pete Hegseth, Mr. Trump’s defense secretary, jolted Kyiv and European allies of Ukraine by saying in a meeting with NATO and Ukrainian defense ministers in Brussels that the United States did not support Ukraine’s desire to join NATO as part of a peace plan. He also described a return to Ukraine’s borders before 2014 — when Russia annexed Crimea — as “unrealistic.”Mr. Trump has repeatedly suggested trading U.S. aid for Ukraine’s critical minerals, telling Fox News earlier this month that he wanted “the equivalent of like $500 billion worth of rare earths,” a group of minerals crucial for many high-tech products, in exchange for American aid. Ukraine had “essentially agreed to do that,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Vance to meet Zelenskyy as European leaders call for unity over Ukraine

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      The US vice-president, JD Vance, will face calls for greater consultation and coherence when he meets European leaders, including the president of Ukraine, at a security conference in Munich.The timing of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s meeting with US officials, initially scheduled for Friday morning, remained unclear because the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, had to change his flight from Washington when the plane experienced a mechanical fault.The expected showdown came after 48 hours in which senior members of the Trump administration, including the president, unleashed a volley of contradictory positions on how and when negotiations with Russia about Ukraine’s future would be conducted.In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Vance tried to quell criticism that Donald Trump had made a series of premature and unilateral concessions in a phone call with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.He said the US would still be prepared to impose sanctions on Russia if Moscow did not accept a satisfactory deal. “There are any number of formulations, of configurations, but we do care about Ukraine having sovereign independence,” he said.Vance added the option of sending US troops to Ukraine if Moscow failed to negotiate in good faith remained “on the table”. He said there were “economic tools of leverage, there are of course military tools of leverage” the US could use against Putin.Before being nominated as vice-president, Vance said he did “not really care about Ukraine’s future, one way or the other”.Rubio added that the US had an interest in the long-term independence of Ukraine, remarks intended to imply some form of security guarantee for Ukraine.Trump has also insisted that any deal would be in consultation with Ukraine, but he has been less emphatic about the involvement of Europeans – an omission that has infuriated leaders of the continent, who believe any Ukrainian settlement will have profound consequences for European security.Trump reiterated that it would not be possible for Ukraine to ever join Nato since Putin would not accept it. In his view, Ukraine is aware of this. “I think that’s how it will have to be,” Trump said.Instead, he foresaw Russia rejoining the G7 group of wealthy countries as part of its reintegration into western economies.The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, who was due to meet his Polish counterpart in Warsaw on Friday, said the US was not making premature concessions.European leaders have long expected Trump would slash US support for Ukraine, but have been shocked by the lack of planning by the administration and the absence of consultation with allies.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe French president joined the chorus of politicians demanding the US adopt a more careful and coordinated approach. “A peace that is a capitulation is bad news for everyone,” Emmanuel Macron said.“The only question at this point is whether President Putin is sincerely, sustainably … prepared for a ceasefire on that basis,” he said, adding that Europe would have a “role to play” in regional security discussions.The most angry response from a senior European politician came from Kaja Kallas, the new EU foreign policy chief and former Estonian president.“Why are we giving them [Russia] everything they want even before the negotiations have started? It’s appeasement. It has never worked,” she said, adding that Nato membership for Ukraine was the “strongest” and “cheapest” security guarantee available.She suggested the war would continue with European support if Zelenskyy was cut out of the talks. “If there is agreement made behind our backs, it simply will not work,” Kallas said. “The Ukrainians will resist and we will support them.”Hegseth also downplayed the relevance of European values to security policy: “We can talk all we want about values. Values are important. But you can’t shoot values. You can’t shoot flags and you can’t shoot strong speeches. There is no replacement for hard power.” More

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      The heartlessness of the deal: how Trump’s ‘America first’ stance sold out Ukraine

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      In Donald Trump’s world, everything has its price.There is no place for sentiment in his politics. Common values cannot secure loans for military aid. And the US president does not care who controls the blood-soaked soils of east Ukraine, so long as he can access the rare earth minerals that lie beneath.The peace Trump will negotiate is not about justice. There is no deeper moral or morality here except for who “got it done”, and Trump has signaled that he is ready to pressure Ukraine and Europe to provide concessions to entice Russia to sign on the dotted line.All that’s left for him is to hash out a price.“I’m just here to try and get peace,” Trump said in the Oval Office, where he riffs out policy daily. “I don’t care so much about anything other than I want to stop having millions of people killed.”It is difficult to put into words what an about-face this is for US support for Ukraine, which for years was built on helping the country defend itself, though not win the war.The Biden administration helped manage the symptoms of Russian aggression. Now, Trump says he’s going to provide the cure. But it is an unwelcome one: stop resisting.Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the adage in the Oval Office had been “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine”. Biden officials regularly said in public that Ukraine itself would decide when it was ready to negotiate.But that was before the US election. It wasn’t the issue of Ukrainian manpower or the supply of weapons that ultimately brought us to this point; it was the price of eggs in Pennsylvania. The Biden administration’s biggest betrayal of Ukraine may have been to lose the US elections, effectively surrendering Ukraine’s second front to “America first”.“We’re the thing that’s holding it back, and frankly, we’ll go as long as we have to go, because we’re not going to let the other happen,” said Trump, in what may be the only silver lining of his remarks on Monday, indicating he wouldn’t allow Ukraine to collapse completely. “But President Putin wants that peace now, and that’s good, and he didn’t want to have peace with Biden.”Some Ukrainian and Russian observers may believe the US president has a deeper plan here, perhaps to consolidate Europe and then pressure Russia as a united front while sinking the oil price. But judging by his actions in Gaza, or in the United States, there is likely to be no deeper plan.Assigning Steve Witkoff, his go-to dealmaker who negotiated the Gaza ceasefire-for-hostages deal, rather than the hawkish Gen Keith Kellogg, indicates that the process will be maximally unsentimental. Just another real estate deal.Now, much of Europe is wondering whether Trump is about to deliver them a fait accompli on their eastern flank, seeking to commit European troops with no Nato protection to Ukraine in a security agreement negotiated exclusively between Moscow and Washington.“What’s left to negotiate?” read one text message from a European official, who called it a “surrender”.In fact, that was just Trump’s opening offer.Russia has indicated it wants him to go further. In a communique, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said he wanted the deal to address the “origins of the conflict”, which he has previously said include Ukraine’s pro-western stance and the Nato expansions of the 2000s and 1990s.He may seek to turn back the clock, said another European official, and demand that US forces stationed in the Baltics, Poland and other former communist countries return, raising concerns about further Russian land grabs without American troops there to guarantee their defense.Such an outcome seemed even more possible on Thursday, when Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, told his Nato counterparts that a reduction of US troop levels in Europe could be part of any deal.In effect, Trump is negotiating with Europe, not Russia. Europe has issued its counteroffer: treat us as a partner and give us a seat at the table.“We shouldn’t take anything off the table before the negotiations have even started,” said Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, before the Nato meeting on Thursday. “It is clear that any deal behind our backs will not work. You need the Europeans, you need the Ukrainians.”That depends what Trump plans to do next, as Hegseth made clear. “Everything is on the table,” he said. “In his conversations with Vladimir Putin and Zelenskyy, what he decides to allow or not allow is at the purview of the leader of the free world: President Trump.”The question is who is in that free world now, and what is the price of entry. More

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      Trump proposes nuclear deal with Russia and China to halve defense budgets

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      Donald Trump said that he wants to restart nuclear arms control talks with Russia and China and that eventually he hopes all three countries could agree to cut their massive defense budgets in half.Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump lamented the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in rebuilding the nation’s nuclear deterrent and said he hopes to gain commitments from the US adversaries to cut their own spending.“There’s no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons. We already have so many,” Trump said. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”“We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully, much more productive,” Trump said.While the US and Russia have held massive stockpiles of weapons since the cold war, Trump predicted that China would catch up in their capability to exact nuclear devastation “within five or six years”.He said that if the weapons were ever called to use, “that’s going to be probably oblivion”.Trump said he would look to engage in nuclear talks with the two countries once “we straighten it all out” in the Middle East and Ukraine.“One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia. And I want to say: ‘Let’s cut our military budget in half.’ And we can do that. And I think we’ll be able to.”Trump in his first term tried and failed to bring China into nuclear arms reduction talks when the US and Russia were negotiating an extension of a pact known as New Start. Russia suspended its participation in the treaty during the Biden administration, as the US and Russia continued on massive programs to extend the lifespans of or replace their cold war-era nuclear arsenals.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOutlining his vision for a shake-up in the world order, Trump also said he would “love” to have Russia back in the G7, from which it was suspended in 2014 after Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.“I think it was a mistake to throw him out,” Trump said, referring to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.In his first term, Trump also called for Russia to be readmitted, but he found little support among other western countries.Trump revealed Wednesday he expected to meet Putin separately for Ukraine peace talks, in a sudden thaw in relations.In their first confirmed contact since Trump’s return to the White House, the US president said he had held a “highly productive” conversation with his Russian counterpart, who ordered the bloody 2022 invasion of Ukraine. More

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      Maps: Ukraine’s Borders Pre-2014 Invasion to Now

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      The question of where Ukraine’s borders with Russia should be drawn in any peace negotiations came into sharp focus this week after Pete Hegseth, the U.S. defense secretary, said that it was “unrealistic” for Ukraine to try to regain all of the territory Russia has seized since 2014.Ukraine’s government has long said that its goal is to restore its borders to where they were before Russia launched its first invasion more than a decade ago.Here is a look at Ukraine’s borders and Russia’s advances into its territory:Independence bordersUkraine’s borders were set when it gained independence in 1991 as the Soviet Union collapsed. It borders Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west; and Romania and Moldova to the south. It also borders its giant neighbor Russia to the east. 2014 invasion and Crimea annexationRussian forces invaded Ukraine in 2014, seizing Crimea, a peninsula extending from its southern coast. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia annexed the territory, a move that is not recognized internationally. Ukraine’s government has said that reclaiming Crimea, by force or diplomacy, is one of its most important goals in the war. In 2018, Russia opened a bridge across the Kerch Strait linking its territory with Crimea. Ukraine has bombed the bridge on several occasions.Military experts have long said that winning back Crimea by force is not a realistic option for Ukraine, given Russia’s military strength. Ukrainian forces have made little headway in opening a route toward Crimea.In the 2014 invasion, Russian forces and proxy militias also seized territory in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, including the capitals of the two provinces it comprises, Donetsk and Luhansk. Moscow has held those cities and much of the surrounding areas ever since.Full-scale invasionThe Kremlin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russian forces failed in their goal of seizing the capital, Kyiv, but they did capture more territory in Donetsk and Luhansk, including the cities of Mariupol and Bakhmut. Russia also won ground in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in southern Ukraine, in effect gaining control of a land corridor along the northern coast of the Sea of Azov. That connected Russian forces in Crimea with territory they controlled in eastern Ukraine.In the fall of 2022, Moscow illegally annexed Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk, just as it had done with Crimea, although it did not control the entirety of those provinces. Over the past year, the fiercest fighting in Ukraine has taken place in Donetsk, where Russian forces have gained control of several cities and towns.Russia now controls around 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory, including areas in the south and east, Crimea and some ground north of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city. More