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A round of talks between the chief diplomats of Russia and the US in Saudi Arabia regarding how to bring about a lasting conclusion to the war in Ukraine should now have shattered any remaining illusions held by European nations or Kyiv about the true nature of the country’s security situation.
Faced with the immediate termination of American military backing for Kyiv, European leaders have stepped up to bow out—rejecting the possibility of servicing virtually any post-war security assistance to the devastated country they have rhetorically supported so righteously over the past 3 years.
With talks close to their conclusion in Riyadh, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed to “appoint respective high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible” according to State.
The new US National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, later told reporters in Riyadh that it was a “practical reality” that the negotiations would involve discussion about territory and post-conflict security guarantees, according to Al Jazeera. Earlier in Brussels, during a meeting of the Ukraine War Contact Group, a consortium of 57 nations supporting Ukraine with military aid, the new US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth outlined how America sees a lasting peace being implemented.
“Any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops. To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine,” he said, adding that Europe must be prepared to “provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and nonlethal aid to Ukraine”.
Speaking later in Munich, US Vice-President JD Vance said Brussels (meaning the EU) should “step up in a big way to provide for its own defense”.
It’s something that critics of the West’s conduct in the war have noted on several occasions. Ukraine yearns for a security guarantee, the best path towards which she saw through NATO. The West, as WaL reported in the months leading up to the war, was not willing to allow her entry into NATO, nor to sign away future membership to satisfy Russian security concerns.
European nations were not willing to go to war on Ukraine’s behalf, nor were they willing to provide the majority of military support during the war. It should come then as no surprise—and should be the final shattering blow to any illusions European voters have on the matter—that accommodating Hegseth’s plans for a post-war peacekeeping force and security guarantee is something which, one by one, all of Ukraine’s major European backers have announced they will not be doing.
For thee but not for me
French President Emmanuel Macron said he would consider sending “limited numbers” of peacekeepers, but only to non-conflict zones.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday dismissed the discussion as “highly inappropriate” before hostilities concluded officially.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk “did not foresee his country sending troops to Ukraine,” despite his tenure overseeing some of the most aggressive anti-Russian rhetoric coming from the NATO alliance, and whose administration was at the forefront of trying to provide Kyiv with F-16 fighter jets, considered by Russia to be a major escalation.
At a Paris conference on European defense organization, Finland, another Russia antagonist, is reported to have also rebuffed ideas of sending troops to Ukraine, worried, according again to Al Jazeera, after her own defense.
The UK alone has said it is open to the idea of a peacekeeping force.
Lastly, it is Kyiv also that finds itself at odds with the US negotiating position—having been neither consulted nor invited to the talks in Riyadh.
“I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it’s going very well. But today, I heard, ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it…” Trump said at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump suggested that Kyiv could have made a deal this whole time, and added that perhaps Russian demands for immediate post-war elections in the country were justified, considering that Zelenskyy suspended all executive and parliamentary elections under martial law after the war began. “That’s not a Russia thing, that’s something coming from me, and coming from many other countries also,” he said of the calls for near-term elections.
In response to not being invited, Zelenskyy put on a brave face, telling reporters in Turkiye that “no decision can be made without Ukraine on how to end the war in Ukraine”.
The reality is, however, that Ukraine can only survive with US military equipment and ammunition, which if Washington interrupted would result in a rapid capitulation of the ability to resist the already-irresistible Russian push in the east.
In Paris, European leaders called for massive increases in continental defense spending, perceiving an abandonment from Washington. It seems not much was forthcoming.
“Nothing has emerged from the public statements from the Paris meeting that shows Europe is any closer to proposing, let alone implementing, anything,” Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, told Al Jazeera.
Faced with taking responsibility for the survival and/or security of Ukraine, Europe seems disinterested, while the White House, having acknowledged the realities of the conflict, is moving fast to address them and conclude it, irrespective of the opinions of their entire allied bloc. No confusion remains. Without the US acting as a belligerent, no defense aid or security guarantee exists for Ukraine. WaL
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PICTURED ABOVE: Secretary of State Marco Rubio meets with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. PC: Pool Photo from Evelyn Hockstein, via AP.
