President Emmanuel Macron from France described a second emergency assembly of the European allies on Wednesday to re -calibrate relationships with the United States, while President Trump increases international politics through quickly changing American alliances.
Mr. Macron had already gathered A dozen European leader in Paris on Monday After Mr. Trump and his new team annoyed and confused the traditional allies of America, the United States quickly fell back from their security role in Europe and planned to perform peace talks with Russia – without Europe or Ukraine at the table.
Mr. Trumps Comments on TuesdayWhen he is full of Russia’s story that Ukraine blamed for the war, he has now attached the impression that the United States are willing to give up their role as a European ally and change pages to president to president To accept Vladimir V. Putin from Russia.
It was a complete reversal of historical alliances that many in Europe made stunned and anxious.
“What happens is very bad. It has been a reversal of the state of the world since 1945, ”said Jeanyves Le Drian, former French Foreign Minister, on Wednesday morning on the French radio.
“It is our security he endangers,” he said, referring to Mr. Trump. “We have to wake up.”
Fear that Mr. Trump is ready to give up Ukraine and in Eastern and Central Europe accepted the Russian discussion points, where memories are long and bitter of the efforts of the West to appease Hitler in Munich in 1938 and Stalin’s demands on Stalin’s requirements Yalta conference in 1945 for a Europe that split into two parts.
“Even Polen’s betrayal in Yalta took longer than the betrayal of Ukraine in Riad” social media, Regarding the American-Russian talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.
Rasa Jukneviciene, a former Defense Minister of Lithuania, who is now a member of the European Parliament, said that it was “difficult to understand” that the sudden changes in the United States’ politics, the once reliable pillar of security in Europe for decades. She said she wondered what historians would write about the events of that time in five decades. “
“It is already clear that the euro-Atlantic connection will not be the same as before,” she said. “The stage in which European security was only guaranteed by the United States after the Second World War.”
Europe, she added, “faces existential challenges” – similar to 1938, after Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain from Great Britain met Hitler in Munich and approved his annexation of parts of Czechoslovakia with a large ethnic German population.
In the Power Vakuum, Mr. Macron tried to show leadership and corrected Allied managers to develop a united reaction.
The Élysée Palace announced that on Wednesday he would organize a second emergency meeting of many European leaders who had not been accepted into the meeting on Monday. Among them were the Interim President of Romania, Ilie Bolojan, and Prime Minister Luc Frieden from Luxembourg, who was to take part in person, while leaders from 18 other countries should take part in videos. This included Ireland, Iceland, Portugal, Sweden, Finland, Norway, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Greece, Sweden and Belgium.
The meeting takes place during the day after Foreign Minister Marco Rubio had met Russian representatives, including Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, in Riad, Saudi Arabia, to discuss a peace agreement for war in Ukraine. To the anger of his president, Volodymyr Zelensky, Who was not invited.
Said Mr. Rubio They hammered out a three -part planwhich would begin to restore bilateral relationships between Washington and Moscow and to investigate with the research of new partnerships-geopolitical and business-between Russia and the United States and at the same time to deal with the end of the war with Ukraine.
Mr. Rubio said he would consult the American “partners in Europe and others” with Ukraine, but ultimately the Russian team will be indispensable for these efforts. “
Later, With reporters on his estate Mar-A-Lago in Florida, Mr. Trump blamed Ukraine for the beginning of the war. Despite the fact that Russia had entered.
“You could have completed a deal,” he said, denounced Mr. Zelensky’s popularity and indicates that he did not deserve a seat at the negotiating table.
“Well, you have had a place for three years. And long before, ”said Mr. Trump. “That could have been done very easily. Only a half -hearted negotiator would have been very little land without the loss of many land before this year, without the loss of many land. Without the loss of a life. And without the loss of cities that are only on their sides. “
The comments of Mr. Trump, who blame Ukraine for the war, was outraged in the Czech Republic, whose centric government was a strong supporter of Ukraine. “I’m afraid we have never been so close to Orwell’s war, peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength before” Vit Rakusan said on social media.
Mr. Le Drian called it a monstrous reversal of the Überlichiances and an “inversion of truth”.
“The victim becomes an attacker,” he said, adding that the United States withdraw in a view of themselves in a view of the 19th century and told an aggressive, expansionist Russia that he should do what it is in Europe wants. “It is the law of the strongest,” he said, adding: “Tomorrow it could be Moldova and after tomorrow it could be Estonia because Putin won’t stop.”
Marko Mihkelson, chairman of the Estonian Parliament Committee Committee, also compared the Riyadh meeting with the 1938 talks in Munich. “All of this paves the way for the attacker to reach his new conquest plans,” he said.
Before Mr. Rubio and Mr. Trump thought on Tuesday on Tuesday, Mr. Macron said that he had thought of the Russian threat to Europe not only in military terms, but also with clever means, including cyber attacks and manipulation of election processes such as Romania.
“Russia is an existential threat to Europeans,” said Macron on Tuesday in an interview with French regional newspapers, including The Parisian And Western France.
“Don’t think that the unthinkable cannot happen, including the worst,” he added.
On Monday a dozen European leader left a quickly organized meeting in Paris With a resounding message that Europeans and Ukrainians had to be accepted into all peace talks with Russia and have committed themselves to increasing military financing.
Many made it clear that they wanted another alliance with the United States that they considered indispensable for European security.
“The positive message was that we all had the same feeling that it was not the USA or Europe, but the United States and Europe together, and that Europe understands that we have to develop, but that we are still still developing want to do it together with the Americans, ”said Prime Minister Dick Schoof from the Netherlands.
Mr. Trump’s recent statement shot about many of these feelings of water and can now force a deeper review of the transatlantic alliance by European leaders.
Mr. Macron was speak for months European managers on the formation of an armistice buffer in Ukraine and has long demanded European strategic autonomy. Nevertheless, he told the French regional news media that he did not believe that the European countries could defend themselves without American support.
He said he expected the European countries to increase their military budgets and announce new programs so that they would do this “already in March”. Denmark announced on Wednesday that it would increase its military budget of $ 5 billion by an additional 7 billion US dollars over two years to achieve 3 percent of gross domestic product.
Already the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced in a speech that she would propose a “escape clause for defense investments” that enables countries to finance defense without violating the strict tax rules of the European Union Saving goals Household deficits below 3 percent of the size of the economy of each country.
“This will enable the Member States to significantly increase their defense expenditure,” she said.
The Europeans also discuss common defense spending – including the financing of them that could include spend joint debtsAlthough this is still up for debate. You also talk about how the development of the European defense industry can be raised.
Last week, the steadfast position of Europe, which the United States held as the central pole of its defense guarantee, seems to change, said Martin Quencez, the director of the Paris office of the German Marshall Fund.
The big question will be whether the European nations will follow with increasing military spending one after the other and maintain a unit front without negotiating Mr. Trump individually, he said.
“I have spoken about wake -up calls so often in the past 10 years.
“I am sure we will hear from every European guide, but let’s see what actual decisions are made” prioritization of European security about social issues or environmental issues. Not many governments have political capital to spend all of this. “
Poland, the largest and most militarily powerful country in the formerly communist east of the European Union, was looking for talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday evening to calm the panic.
On this day, President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw was attended by Mr. Trump’s special representative for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, a lieutenant general in retirement. The Polish guide said that Mr. Kellogg assured him that there is absolutely no American intentions to reduce the activities in our part of Europe, especially in the area of security, to reduce the number of American soldiers. “
The United States have thousands of soldiers in Poland and opened a new one in November Misset defense facility near the Baltic Sea This Russia sees as a threat to its own security. Washington to close the Polish location and a similar in Romania was a long -term demand from Mr. Putin.
Jeanna Smialek Contribution to Brussels reporting.
