No higher delegation of European leaders has ever assembled for a mission of such extraordinary importance – talks with an American president who now wholly represents the interests of Russia.
Donald Trump has represented Russia’s strategic interests against Ukraine, Europe, and arguably his own country, consistently since his inauguration this year.
He will be speaking the Kremlin’s mind when he meets Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval office. And he will rehearsing Putin’s talking points when he meets the assembled European leaders later.
Putin’s strategic aim has been to defoliate Europe’s democracies as part of a wider effort to restore Russian power, and the land holdings of the Soviet Empire. His backing of far right groups like France’s National Front and Germany’s AfD, his support for Brexit and for Hungary’s authoritarian leader Victor Orban, show this.
Donald Trump is also a fan of Orban, his cabinet members are supporters of the AfD and he thought Brexit was a great idea. He’s very much on side with Putin.
Trump has directly supported Russia’s war effort this year in the prosecution of its invasion of Ukraine. He cut arms supplies from the US. He suspended Ukraine’s access to real-time intelligence as Russia re-took the Kursk region of territory captured last year by Kyiv.
Trump has been Putin’s agent orange in Ukraine.
Now the leaders of Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Finland, the European Union and NATO hope to shore up Zelensky at a crucial diplomatic moment in Putin’s invasion.
They’re in Washington DC to make sure Zelensky isn’t subjected to the public bullying session that met him in the Oval Office in February.
More importantly, though, is that they’re there because, among other things, Trump has spelled out what his agenda is – Ukrainian surrender.
“President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight,” Trump said on his social media posts.
He means Ukraine should just give up – throw in the towel and hope that Russia won’t attack again. Putin will attack again. He invaded first in 2014, agreed various later ceasefires, then invaded in earnest in 2022.
He wants all of Ukraine. He has said so many times. He also wants eastern Europe back in the Russian sphere just like in the days of the Soviet empire. He said its loss was the greatest global catastrophe the world had ever seen. He wants it back and Trump wants to give it to him.
The White House has accepted that Ukraine must give up all of the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as Crimea. These are the “land swaps” that Russia is making that involve no Russian territory in return for a “freeze” of the frontlines where they are. His leaves Russia with 20 per cent of Ukraine.
Zelensky, and Europe’s leaders, are making one final effort to bring Trump in from the cold and have him rejoin the democratic west, but they’re up against it.
The US president has agreed with Putin that Ukraine can never join Nato. He has, apparently, agreed that Ukraine should get security guarantees to protect its future after the war but offered no whiff of detail on this.
There’s no mention of Russian reparations for its war crimes in Ukraine, no mention of using frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s defence or repair the damage done.
Trump is demanding that Ukraine make all the concessions while Putin makes none.
It doesn’t make sense for America to behave like this.
Trump has, ironically, weakened its standing in Europe and Nato by (rightly) insisting that its member states pay for their own defence. They are now heading towards spending around 3.5 per cent of GDP on this and soon that will be 5 per cent, they say.
His attacks on Nato and his administration’s support for anti-democratic forces in Europe make enemies of friends. Trump dreams of befriending Russia, perhaps. Moscow sees the west as an existential threat that must be subverted and conquered – not cuddled.
From the first day of his presidency, Trump has backed a Russian victory over the defence of European democracy and international law.
The world order has been replaced by a rogue order, in which leaders whom Trump admires – Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu – get to commit war crimes with American help. Putin gets backing over Ukraine and Netanyahu gets actual bombs to drop on Gaza.
In a peace settlement of the sort dreamed of for Ukraine, the aggressor, Russia, would be forced to withdraw from the territory it invaded. It would pay for the damage it has done, and it would be shown that any future attacks would be devastating.
“Let’s reiterate once more – Russia started this war,” said Petteri Orpo, Finland’s prime minister.
But Trump does not work this way.
In his own country, he has flooded the capital with soldiers. He’s sought to undermine federal and state courts, he’s sent heavily armed masked ICE police across America sowing terror in a campaign against illegal immigrants, and muses on subverting the US constitution with a third term in office.
If there was any doubt about where Trump stands, consider how he admires the methods used by Putin to deal with his internal opponents – many of whom have fallen to their deaths from windows, died in prison, been poisoned or simply disappeared.
“I said, ‘Vladimir, how do you deal with your opponents? Do you have them vanish? Do you have them taken out in the middle of the night? What’s your secret?’” said Trump on May 17 this year in Des Moines, Iowa.
That’s why Europe’s leaders are in DC.
