BRUSSELS (AN) – U.S. President Donald Trump's rhetorical alignment with Russian President Vladimir Putin's false narratives about Ukraine upended the post-World War II order and sent political shock waves through Europe.
Under Trump, European leaders learned this week, the U.S. can no longer be counted on to put Europe's security and sovereignty ahead of Russian ambition. In doing so, he cast aside eight decades of U.S.-led security guarantees and international cooperation that fueled the West's prosperity.
Trump falsely blamed Ukraine for starting the war with Russia that has cost tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives and called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy "a dictator without elections," despite his landslide 2019 victory and Ukrainian law's ban on elections during martial law.
The U.S. opposed describing Russia as the aggressor in a Group of Seven statement condemning the war. At the U.N. General Assembly, the U.S. delegation refused to co-sponsor a resolution supporting Ukraine's independence and blaming “Russian aggression” for starting the war.
The abrupt reset in transatlantic relations made for a head-spinning week. That includes deep uncertainty about one of the bedrock agreements, NATO's Article 5, committing the military alliance's members to collective defense. The U.S. is the bedrock of NATO deterrence.
"What worries me a lot is the behavior of the American government," Friedrich Merz, the front-runner to become Germany's next chancellor, said in an interview on Friday morning with German broadcaster ZDF.
He urged Europe to quickly adjust to losing the U.S. as a reliable partner.
"We have to be prepared for the fact that Donald Trump will no longer fully respect the NATO treaty's promise of assistance," said Merz, urging Europeans to "make every effort now" to defend the continent alone.
“We need to have discussions with both the British and the French, the two European nuclear powers, about whether nuclear sharing, or at least nuclear security from the U.K. and France, could also apply to us,” he said.
Disinformation and glee from Russian state media
The U.S. special envoy for Russia and Ukraine, retired U.S. Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, praised Zelenskyy on Friday as an "embattled and courageous leader." The two met a day earlier in Kyiv but the U.S. canceled a joint news conference as tensions between Zelenskyy and Trump mounted.
Zelenskyy warned that Trump lives in a “disinformation bubble” and parrots Russian disinformation, drawing criticism from U.S. Vice-President JD Vance for "badmouthing" the U.S. president.
"Everyone who knows the president will tell you that is an atrocious way to deal with this administration," Vance told the Daily Mail.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has killed and injured tens of thousands of civilians, according to U.N. figures, and heavily damaged Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals, and power grid.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said more than 50,000 people are missing, include civilians and soldiers from both sides.
Russian state-controlled media celebrated Trump's statements and predicted Ukraine won’t reclaim lost territory. “Trump isn’t even trying to hide his irritation with Zelenskyy,” Rossiya TV reported. Kommersant, Russia’s largest daily paper, called the developments “Putin’s triumph.”
'We need to be armed to our teeth': Europe wakes up
The seismic shift in America’s stance on Ukraine triggered panic in Kyiv and a sense of urgency across European capitals.
“Does the world look uneasy? Yes. Is there reason to believe it will be over soon? No,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Fredriksen told reporters. “There is one message for the chief of defense: buy, buy, buy.”
Fredriksen said her country would drop its normal procurement to speed up the defense blitz, mirroring the European Comission's support for more military spending by dropping deficit spending limits.
“If we can’t get the best equipment, buy the next best. There’s only one thing that counts now and that is speed,” Fredriksen said.
Lithuania's Defence Minister Dovilė Sakalienė told Euronews that Europe must quickly arm itself as the U.S. vacates its traditional transatlantic role.
"Talks are completely irrelevant right now. Funds and production is what is really relevant," she said. "If we really want to stand strong by Ukraine, and if we really want to stand strong in the face of Russia's preparation for the next stages of imperial expansion, then we need to be armed to our teeth, and probably more. And that needs to start happening quite soon."
Accentuating those fears were reports that Russia asked the U.S. to remove all troops from Eastern Europe during their talks in Saudi Arabia this week, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s earlier assertions the “U.S. military presence in Europe may not be forever.”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told Bloomberg the European Union is preparing a massive €700 billion package for European and Ukrainian security "that has never been seen on this scale before," far surpassing the total aid sent to Ukraine since the invasion.
New Versailles – imposed on a victim
Europe’s blitz of preparations and aid for Ukraine contrasts sharply with the Trump administration's demands from Ukraine for unclear returns.
The U.S. demanded $500 billion in payment from Ukraine's rare earth deposits and other resource profits for $183 billion of military support, including two-fifths spent on U.S. activities and domestic arms production.
The agreement, seen by The Telegraph, sets a higher rate of reparations per GDP than the Treaty of Versailles did on defeated Germany after World War I. Trump said Ukraine “may be Russian someday” if it rejects the deal.
“They have tremendously valuable land in terms of rare earths, in terms of oil and gas,” Trump said. “I want this money back.”
Trump repeatedly mischaracterized how much aid U.S. sent Ukraine. The E.U. is the largest donor to Ukraine since the war began.
The Trump administration dismantled a U.S. Justice Department initiative that since 2010 has worked to identify the assets of kleptocrats, seize them and return them to the countries from which they were stolen.
It also eliminated a separate unit formed in early 2022 in the wake of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine that targeted oligarchs close to Putin and enforced sanctions against Russia by the U.S. and its allies after the invasion.
U.S. demands of Russia remain unclear
It remains unclear what Trump wants Russia to do in exchange for peace with Ukraine.
After their talks in Saudi Arabia, American and Russian officials said the countries would strive to resume formal diplomatic relations, lift sanctions and seek mutual "economic opportunities."
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he believed Washington was starting to better understand the Kremlin's positions. “We weren’t just listening to each other, but we heard each other," he said.
It's not clear, however, that Moscow wants peace. Denmark's intelligence service reported that Russia might start a "large-scale war" in Europe within five years.
"Russia is likely to be more willing to use military force in a regional war against one or more European NATO countries if it perceives NATO as militarily weakened or politically divided," it reported.
That could strain Russia’s ailing economy, equivalent to Spain's in size. Though Trump’s alignment with Putin lifted Russia's wartime economy, the E.U. plans to keep sanctions on Russia even if the U.S. does not.
Asked directly what Russia should give up this week, Trump said "it's too early to say what’s going to happen. Maybe Russia will give up a lot, maybe they won’t, and it’s all dependent on what is going to happen.”
He parroted Kremlin rhetoric that pins the blame for the invasion on Ukraine’s NATO ambitions. His new director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has made that assertion since the day after Putin launched the invasion. NATO is a defensive alliance.
“Russia has taken over a pretty big chunk of territory, and they also have said from day one — long before President Putin – they’ve said they cannot have Ukraine be in NATO," Trump said. "That was the thing that caused the start of the war."
