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      Zelensky Urges ‘More Truth’ After Trump Suggests Ukraine Started the War

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      President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine appealed to the Trump administration on Wednesday to respect the truth and avoid disinformation in discussing the war that began with a Russian invasion of his country, in his first response to President Trump’s suggestion that Ukraine had started the war.“I would like to have more truth with the Trump team,” Mr. Zelensky told reporters in Kyiv during a broader discussion about the administration, which this week opened peace talks with Russia that excluded Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky said that the U.S. president was “living in a disinformation space” and in a “circle of disinformation.”The remarks, delivered from his presidential office in Kyiv, a building still fortified with sandbags to avoid blasts from Russian missiles, were some of the most pointed yet about Mr. Trump and his views on the war.The 38th Separate Marine Brigade firing a Grad self-propelled 122-milimeter multiple rocket launcher at a Russian target from the Pokrovsk front line of eastern Ukraine on Monday.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesMr. Zelensky had until this week walked a fine line of staking out Ukrainian positions while avoiding any suggestion of an open breach with the United States, Ukraine’s most important ally in the now nearly three-year-old war. After the initial cease-fire talks between Russia and the United States, Mr. Zelensky on Tuesday had starkly laid out his refusal to accept terms negotiated without Ukrainian participation.Later Tuesday, Mr. Trump said of Ukraine’s leadership and the war, “You should have never started it,” and appeared to embrace what has been a Russian demand that Ukraine hold elections before some stages of talks. Elections were suspended under martial law after Russia’s invasion in February 2022.Mr. Trump also said that Mr. Zelensky’s approval rating was 4 percent. Mr. Zelensky said that was not true, citing polls showing far higher support.At the news conference, Mr. Zelensky was focused and spoke with intensity. He said he was not personally ruffled by the negotiations with the Trump administration. “This is not my first dialogue or fight,” he said. “I take it calmly.”Russia, he said, is clearly pleased with the turn of diplomatic developments. “I think Putin and the Russians are very happy, because questions are discussed with them,” Mr. Zelensky said.“Yesterday, there were signals of speaking with them as victims,” he said of the Trump officials’ tone in discussing the Russian officials, whose government sparked the largest war in Europe since World War II, which has killed or wounded about a million people on both sides over three years. “That is something new.” More

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      Is Russia Open for Business — and at What Cost?

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      Investors seem open to the prospect of peace talks, but Western companies face a dilemma just three years after many retreated from the country.The return of Western businesses would be an enormous lift to President Vladimir Putin of Russia. But would they dare risk it?Pool photo by Mikhail MetzelWe’re taking a look at President Trump’s plans to consolidate control over many of the agencies that oversee business, including the S.E.C., the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and the National Labor Relations Board.For years, industry has complained about the alphabet soup of agencies, which often compete with one another. Some officials argue that is a feature, not a bug, while others have called for a complete rethinking of the regulatory apparatus in the country. What do you think?Meanwhile, President Trump is expected to speak on Wednesday at the Saudi-hosted FII Priority conference in Miami Beach, the event that’s increasingly a gathering of power players including Ken Griffin of Citadel, Dara Khosrowshahi of Uber and Masa Son of SoftBank. DealBook’s Lauren Hirsch will be reporting on the ground there and we’ll bring you the latest Thursday morning.“Incredible opportunities” Frozen out of potential Russia-Ukraine peace talks, European leaders are either feeling dazed or are fuming. But investors are feeling increasingly optimistic about the prospects of the nearly three-year war ending, especially as President Trump indicates he may meet with President Vladimir Putin of Russia this month.One big question is how corporate leaders feel about U.S. and Russian officials signaling that Russia may reopen to Western businesses. Concerns like the future of Western sanctions on Moscow remain unresolved, while companies may still feel burned by their hasty and costly exodus from the country.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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      Ukraine’s Equation

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      The West has fractured, and Putin knows it.For Ukraine, a peace deal with Russia is not just about stopping the war. A deal should also prevent the next one — by convincing Russia that its invasion was a costly failure.In that context, the past week brought a lot of bad news for Ukraine. American officials conceded that Ukraine would not reclaim all of its territory or join NATO. They also said that U.S. troops would not help protect Ukraine’s borders after the war.Maybe a truce would have eventually included those conditions. But by granting them now, the concessions push a peace deal in Russia’s favor — and may get Vladimir Putin to think that, after all of this, the war was worth the costs. “The United States is intent on ending this war,” said my colleague Julian Barnes, who covers international security. “And ending it quickly likely means trying to end it on Russia’s terms.”Today’s newsletter looks at why Ukraine is increasingly concerned about a future Russian invasion.Imposing costsSince the beginning of the war, Ukraine has worried that an eventual cease-fire will simply give Russia time to rebuild and come back. So Ukraine and its allies have tried to prevent this scenario through two approaches.First, they have tried to make the war as costly as possible for Russia. On the diplomatic front, Ukraine’s allies have imposed economic sanctions on Russia. On the battlefield, Russia has lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers to death and injuries. At the same time, Ukraine has tried to retake as much territory as possible. If Russia ended the war with an economy in ruins, a colossal death toll and little new territory, it would likely look at the invasion as a mistake.Sources: The Institute for the Study of War | Map is as of Feb. 18. | By The New York TimesWe 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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      in US Politics

      The US and Europe are at a crossroads. A new world order is emerging

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      Over the past week, the foundations of US-European relations shifted dramatically.In a series of highly controversial interventions, Donald Trump’s administration outlined a new US approach to Europe. It revolves around negotiating a rapid end to the war between Ukraine and Russia, handing Europe the lead responsibility for its own defense, and forging a new transatlantic alliance of populist forces on the right. After 25 years of working on transatlantic relations, I am aware of the tendency of crisis moments like this to fade and relationships to trend back toward historical norms. But this time is different.At the Munich Security Conference, Trump officials hurled a series of rhetorical bombs at their European counterparts. As the electricity crackled through the cramped rooms of Munich’s Bayerischer Hof hotel over the weekend, the historic stakes were clear. Would Europe manage, after years of talk, to pull together and defend itself or would it simply be a pawn in the US and Russia’s larger game? Would Ukraine avoid being overrun by the Russian army and emerge with its sovereignty intact? For the rest of the world, what would it mean for the west to truly fracture, Russia to be rehabilitated, and the war in Ukraine to end?The reverberations began last Wednesday when the US president announced that he and Vladimir Putin had made a plan to negotiate an end to the war. Europe and Ukraine were frightened to the bone that the future of their security would be decided without them.Meanwhile, Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of defense, said at Nato headquarters in Brussels that Europe would need to provide for Ukraine’s defenses once the war was over – and with only limited support from the United States. Europeans fear they are woefully unprepared for this task. In a reversal of official US policy, Hegseth added that Ukraine would not join Nato. Ironically, it was the Republican George W Bush who had first insisted that it would in 2008 – over the objections of his German and French counterparts, who thought doing so would provoke Russia.When the US vice-president, JD Vance, strode on to the Munich stage, the throng in the Bayerischer Hof thus waited with bated breath. What, exactly, was Trump’s plan for Ukraine? What they got instead will go down as one of the most controversial speeches an American political leader has ever given in Europe.With little discussion of Ukraine’s future, Vance launched into a harangue that alleged that Europe was repressing free speech and undermining democracy by holding back rightwing nationalist movements like the Alternative für Deutschland. This dropped like molten lead. Here was a vision of democracy sharply at odds with his audience’s.Vance clearly aimed to shock. Whether he aimed to insult is unclear, but in the end he did both.Afterward, European leaders hastily rewrote their own remarks to attack Vance’s and call for European unity in the face of American betrayal. Some were more realistic than others about what they might achieve.On the realistic side was Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, who spoke publicly in many forums about the need to turn a possible Yalta moment, in which Russia and the US remake European security without Europe’s input, into a Helsinki moment, in which the principles for a future peace and detente are put in place.Others, however, still in a state of shock, continued to call for Europe to push back against the US, go its own way, and win the war for Ukraine on its own. Talking points like these worked well three years ago, but their unrealistic nature today risks undermining Europe’s ability to pull together and ensure its vital interests are protected.View image in fullscreenMeanwhile, Asia’s two giants – China and India – watched this remaking of the west with optimism. China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, took a tranquil, almost beneficent tone in his remarks as he surveyed the chasms that had emerged. China, after all, has itself long sought to provoke such divides. India’s foreign minister, S Jaishankar, was perhaps more circumspect, but still optimistic. For these countries, the crackup of the west is only another sign that the rest of this century will be theirs.The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has since met in Saudi Arabia with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, to prepare the way for Putin and Trump’s next discussion on the future of Ukraine – and by extension Europe. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has convened European heads of state in the hope of forging the consensus they will need to protect their world in this moment of crisis. This will be very hard.Years as an observer and participant in the making of Europe’s relations with the US leave me innately wary of ever judging a single crisis to mark a definitive shift. The structural features of the transatlantic relationship are deep and often guide us away from crises toward a median line – whether over Iraq, Libya or Iran. The challenges to negotiating an end to this war are moreover enormous and history could cleave in more directions than one as the process unfolds.The United States is not decoupling from Europe, but this past week must be viewed as the opening salvo in a major US effort to renegotiate the terms of its bond with Europe. How far the Trump administration will get cannot be known, but this foundational relationship of US statecraft, which was born in the moment of the US’s rise to global superpower status, will change in fundamental ways. With it, the future of modern democracy, itself born of Europe and sustained by the transatlantic bond for decades, is in play. A new world order is emerging.

      Christopher Chivvis is senior fellow and director of the American statecraft program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He served as the US national intelligence officer for Europe from 2018 to 2021 More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on Trump’s diplomacy: when the US knows the price and ignores values | Editorial

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      The Trump administration did not take red lines on Ukraine to its talks with Russia in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday: it cares about the bottom line. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, underscored that when he said the two sides would create a team, not only to support Ukraine peace talks but also to explore the “incredible opportunities” to partner with Moscow geopolitically “and, frankly, economically” that might result.Kyiv and other European capitals are still reeling at the full extent of Donald Trump’s cynicism when it comes to world affairs, and callous disregard for the people caught up in them. But it should be no surprise that business dealings were high on the agenda. Vladimir Putin would dearly love to end his country’s economic isolation. Russia is making the case that American energy firms and others could profit handsomely by doing business with it again.For Mr Trump, his two key interests – money and power – are not only interrelated but fungible, just as US goals and his personal interests often appear indistinguishable to him. (This is a man who launched his own cryptocurrency token days before returning to the White House, and as he sought to ease regulation of the industry).When he talks of the future of Ukraine or Gaza, he speaks not of human rights and security, lives and homes, but of laying US hands on $500bn of minerals and a “big real-estate site” respectively. He believes in cutting deals, not making peace. At the heart of his foreign policy team is Steve Witkoff, not a diplomat but a billionaire real-estate developer and golf buddy. Mr Witkoff was first appointed as Middle East envoy and then dispatched to negotiate with Moscow. The head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev, was also in Riyadh – while Ukraine and European allies have been denied a seat.Mr Trump’s merging of wealth and strength were obvious even before he took office the first time. He suggested he could use Taiwan as leverage with China on issues including trade. John Bolton, who became his national security adviser, later said (though Mr Trump denied it) that the president pleaded with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to ensure he would win the next election, “stress[ing] the importance of … increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome”.Mr Trump’s Middle East policy is not only pleasing to his evangelical Christian supporters. His repugnant proposal to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, allowing the construction of an American-owned “Riviera”, is shocking but in many ways builds upon ideas long held by businessman friends as well as Israeli settlers. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a former real-estate developer charged with overseeing Middle East policy in Mr Trump’s first term, suggested last year that Gaza’s “waterfront property” could be “very valuable”. (Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, incidentally, became a major investor in Mr Kushner’s private equity firm after he left the administration.)Volodymyr Zelenskyy tried to capitalise on Mr Trump’s economic transactionalism by offering access to Ukraine’s resources, notably minerals, in exchange for security. He got Mr Trump’s attention – but the terms of the resulting US demand make it look less like diplomacy than extortion. The US president prices up everything and knows the value of nothing. Others must now endeavour to show him that his plans will not come as cheaply as he believes.

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      Ukraine will never accept Russia’s ultimatums, Volodymyr Zelenskyy says

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      Ukraine reacted with gloom and dismay on Tuesday to the meeting between the US and Russia in Saudi Arabia, with Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying he would never accept Russia’s ultimatums.The high-stakes negotiations between the two delegations got under way in Riyadh just hours after Russia attacked Ukraine with dozens of drones. At least two people were killed and 26 injured in strikes across the country.One drone hit the top floor of a high-rise residential building in the central city of Dolynska, in the Kirovohrad region. A mother and her two children were injured and taken to hospital. “A difficult night,” said the local governor, Andriy Raikovych.Soon after the talks concluded in Riyadh, air raid sirens wailed across the capital, Kyiv. Millions of Ukrainians were told by text message to seek shelter because of a threat from Russian ballistic missiles.Speaking in Ankara after a meeting with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Zelenskyy said Ukraine would not accept the results of talks on how to end the war with Russia that were held “behind Ukraine’s back”.“It feels like the US is now discussing the ultimatum that Putin set at the start of the full-scale war,” Zelenskyy told reporters. He added: “Once again, decisions about Ukraine are being made without Ukraine. I wonder why they believe Ukraine would accept all these ultimatums now if we refused them at the most difficult moment?”Zelenskyy also said he would seek the return of occupied eastern and southern towns and villages via diplomatic means, emphasising: “They will be Ukrainian. There can be no compromise.”Reuters reported that Zelenskyy has postponed a visit to Saudi Arabia planned for Wednesday to avoid giving the US-Russia talks “legitimacy”.It was absurd for Moscow to talk about peace while killing Ukrainians, said Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of Zelenskyy’s office. The latest salvo of 176 drones fired at Ukraine represented Russia’s actual “negotiating position”, he posted.Without criticising the Trump administration directly, he said the high-level US-Russia talks had not been properly prepared, adding that they were merely a forum for more Russian “ultimatums”.“Encouragement rather than coercion, a voluntary and bizarre renunciation of strength in favour of disheartening and unmotivated appeasement of the aggressor,” Podolyak wrote, summing up Kyiv’s negative reaction.There is widespread scepticism that Russia would abide by any ceasefire deal unless it was underpinned by security guarantees – from the US and other western powers. Podolyak said there was no point in having a “fake peace” that would lead to “an inevitable continuation of the war”.Ukrainians have bitter memories of two deals signed with Russia in the Belarus capital, Minsk, after Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 and began a covert invasion of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Russia repeatedly violated both ceasefires.There are fears that a quick deal between Washington and Moscow would amount to Minsk 3 – another agreement that Russia would swiftly break. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference last weekend, Zelenskyy said Russia was ready to expand its invasion and “wage war” against Nato.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMore immediately, there were concerns that a Trump-Putin deal would demand that Ukraine hold elections immediately after a ceasefire came into force, and before any final agreement was reached. The goal, Ukrainian commentators suggested, would be to replace Zelenskyy with a weaker leader, or even a pro-Russian candidate.Ukraine is not obliged to hold elections under martial law. Few Ukrainians think they are practical at a time when Russia’s invasion has forced millions of citizens to flee abroad and when soldiers are fighting and dying on the frontline. European embassies in Kyiv agree.The White House excluded Kyiv and European nations from its direct talks with Russia, the first bilateral contact between the two sides since before Moscow’s 2022 invasion.Ukraine’s former foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said he did not expect a truce with Russia any time soon, telling the BBC: “Peace is not even visible on the horizon.” Kuleba said it was in Ukraine’s interest to resist US pressure for a speedy solution and to instead engage with Trump over a sustained period.Kuleba said: “Peace isn’t visible for one simple reason: because Putin still believes that he can outwit everyone, that time is on his side, fate is on his side, the west has wavered, America is retreating, Europe is not able to take the field instead of America, or … is not ready to put on the captain’s armband.”He added: “The key question now is, actually, where is Putin in this scheme? In my opinion, he believes that he will win. Victory for him is all of Ukraine. He didn’t come for some piece of land. He came for Ukraine.” More

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      A Trump-Putin carve-up of Ukraine is indefensible | Letters

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      I look with horror and outrage not only at the patronising and hypocritical words of JD Vance in Munich (JD Vance stuns Munich conference with blistering attack on Europe’s leaders, 14 February) but also at the apparent attempt by Donald Trump to effect peace between Ukraine and Russia without including either Ukraine or Europe more generally (Trump says he has spoken to Putin and agreed to negotiate Ukraine ceasefire, 12 February).A peace that prevents any more bloodshed can only be a good thing, but it cannot be a carve-up in which Vladimir Putin achieves the victory that Ukrainians have so gallantly deprived him of on the battlefield. Or in which Ukraine is impoverished and emasculated by a greedy US and irredentist Russia.Moreover, if Europe and, by extension, the UK, are to be excluded from negotiations on the future of Ukraine and the continent, under no circumstances should British or other European troops be used in a peacekeeping role.The idea that Trump thinks he can cut a deal with Putin, rob Ukraine of her mineral wealth and then leave Europe to pick up the pieces is disgraceful beyond belief. We should not fall for it.It is unacceptable that British lives be risked for the knavery of Trump and his acolytes. If the US wants European troops on the ground, we get a place at the negotiating table. No ifs, no buts. No taxation without representation: is that not a founding principle of US democracy?William SeafordNewport If Donald Trump is determined to upend post-1945 international structures, as seems likely given his vice-president’s speech, then both sides of the Atlantic need to contemplate the full meaning of a transactional approach to security. Maybe British politicians will stop kidding themselves about the so-called special relationship, which has only ever been special to the Americans when it suited them. At the same time, perhaps someone can inform Trump that it is a mistake to evaluate defence alliances like real-estate deals.Should the president pay a visit to the UK, as Keir Starmer seems to hope, I suggest he be taken to visit the Iraq and Afghanistan memorial in Victoria Embankment Gardens, London, where he’ll be reminded of the 626 UK military personnel who died in furtherance of American wars in those countries between 2001 and 2014. Given the popular reverence for veterans in the US, the Maga movement might find our military sacrifice is one of the few aspects of the North Atlantic alliance it can’t easily dismiss.If Trump then still ditches Europe in favour of deals with Putin, it needs to be made clear that self-interest works on both sides. The US won’t be able to expect its former allies to fall in line behind it in the same way it has commanded since the end of the second world war.Mark CottleMaesygwartha, Monmouthshire As Simon Tisdall pointed out a year ago in the Observer, the UK cannot maintain its Trident nuclear deterrent without the active support of the United States. There now appears a high risk that the US will want to be able to veto the use of Trident by the UK and/or to extract a high price for any continued support. Isn’t it time to think about mothballing Trident and redirecting that funding to conventional defence capacity in Europe?Simon RewLondon More

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      As the US retreats, Europe must look out for itself – so is Macron’s nuclear offer the answer? | Simon Tisdall

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      The startling contempt for Europe’s intensifying security concerns displayed by Donald Trump and his henchmen has brought an old, controversial question back to the fore: should Britain and France pool their nuclear weapons capabilities and create a Europe-wide defensive nuclear shield to deter Vladimir Putin’s Russia, if the US reduces or withdraws its support?Trump has not so far explicitly threatened to cut US nuclear forces based in Europe. But speaking last week, the president said he wanted to halve the US’s defence spending, especially on nuclear weapons. Trump often denigrates Nato, keystone of European security. Last year, he encouraged Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to member states that, in his view, spend too little on defence.Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, warned Nato defence ministers in Brussels that defending Europe was no longer a strategic priority, and raised the prospect of US troop withdrawals. In an insulting speech at the Munich security conference, he minimised the threat posed by Russia. Americans would not be taken for “suckers” by Europeans, he said.These unprecedented assaults on US-Europe ties have raised real fears of a damaging, possibly permanent rupture with Washington. It is against this volatile background that France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, has called an emergency summit in Paris of European leaders, including Keir Starmer. The meeting is expected to focus on Ukraine, its future defence, and Europe’s anticipated exclusion from US “peace talks” with Russia due later this week.Yet an even bigger issue overshadows the summit: how to better organise Europe’s collective defences in the context of reduced, unreliable or nonexistent US support and overt nuclear threats from an emboldened Russia. Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister, has predicted that Putin could attack at least one Nato country within the next five years. Frontline Poland and the Baltic republics voice similar fears.Nato’s chief, Mark Rutte, has urged all 32 member states to expand defence spending. Many, including Britain, appear poised to do so. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, dismayed by what looks to many in Kyiv like US betrayal, told the Munich conference it was time to create an “army of Europe”. That reflects ideas long promoted by Macron, a passionate champion of more integrated, expanded, self-reliant European defence – and reduced US dependence.It is Macron who is leading the debate about a pan-European nuclear shield. The French leader gave new prominence to the idea in a 2020 speech at the École de Guerre in Paris, when he suggested a “strategic dialogue with our European partners … on the role played by France’s nuclear deterrence in our collective security”. Macron repeated the offer in 2022 and again last year.France is not proposing to place its independent deterrent, the force de frappe, which comprises about 290 warheads and operates separately from Nato, under the control of other countries – or the EU. What Macron is saying, like François Hollande and other French leaders before him, is that there exists a “European dimension” to France’s nuclear defence planning. If, for example, Berlin were threatened with nuclear destruction, that would be seen as a threat to Paris, too.“French leaders have three main worries,” an analysis published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) stated. “Firstly, there is a high risk that Trump could withdraw from Nato, or at least significantly reduce US conventional forces in Europe … Secondly, he may also reduce the number of US nuclear weapons currently deployed in Europe, though not much evidence currently supports that prospect.“Thirdly, and most importantly, a US president who loathes or dismisses many European countries is unlikely to risk American lives for Europe.” This latter argument has circulated in France since the days of Gen Charles de Gaulle, who created the force de frappe: namely that, if push came to shove, the US would go nuclear to save Boston but not Boulogne, Bratislava or Bognor Regis.Macron’s proposal raises numerous, complex questions. Among them, who could order the actual use of “Europeanised” nuclear weapons? Who would pay for such a force, especially if necessarily modernised and enlarged? Would such a move make matters worse, by accelerating US disengagement?The view from Germany, a necessary partner in any such project, is mixed. The chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and anti-nuclear parties such as the Greens strongly dislike the idea (as do French leftwing and far-right parties). But Friedrich Merz, Scholz’s likely successor, is reportedly interested. Manfred Weber, a leading German conservative, told the Guardian last year that doubts about Trump meant it was time to take up Macron’s offer. Weber also urged the opening of a “new chapter” with London.The need for British involvement has also been raised by Christian Lindner, another senior German politician. “The question is: under what political and financial conditions would Paris and London be prepared to maintain or expand their own strategic capabilities for collective security?” Lindner wrote last year. “When it comes to peace and freedom in Europe, we must not shy away from these difficult questions.”The IISS study raised similar issues. “As the only other nuclear power in Europe, Britain is a natural partner for France in any exploration of how to strengthen European deterrence … [They] regularly exchange data about nuclear safety and security … The British and French nuclear arsenals combined come to around 520 warheads, numerically equivalent to China’s current deterrent force. This alone could send a stronger message to Russia.”Development of a joint UK-French nuclear umbrella, under the auspices of the European Nato allies and sidelining the US, is politically explosive for Starmer. It would raise questions about sovereign control, not least from the Eurosceptic right. It could be seen by many in Labour as fuelling nuclear weapons proliferation, bringing nuclear war closer. Putin, who has threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, would view it as a provocation. So, too, for different reasons, might Trump. It would be a good test of how independent of the US the UK deterrent really is.But as the defence analyst Joseph de Weck argues in Internationale Politik Quarterly, times are changing fast. Governments urgently need solutions to Europe’s rapidly deepening security crisis. “Europeans may simply not have the time for gradualism in security integration any more,” De Weck wrote. Extending French and UK nuclear guarantees to the whole of Europe, including Ukraine, is an idea whose time has come.

      Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s foreign affairs commentator More