‘Europe plus’ cannot save Ukraine

Days after the disastrous White House showdown between Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump, British prime minister Keir Starmer has done an undoubtedly impressive job in quickly rallying western leaders to Kyiv’s cause. The “Europe Plus” partnership suggested by Starmer will be a “coalition of the willing” to protect Ukraine that includes major non-European players such as Canada and, crucially, Turkey. 

But make no mistake over the nature of Europe Plus’s new role. It is not, as some more excitable commentators have called it, a “mini-NATO.” Europe is not taking over responsibility for its own security. A new European world order is not being built before our eyes. Behind the grand verbiage and the impressive group photos, the true purpose of the London summit was to patch things up between Zelensky and the White House, and to lay the groundwork for a ceasefire. That ceasefire proposal will be presented not to Vladimir Putin but to the US. 

Yes, Europe is waking up to the new reality that for generations it has outsourced its defense to the Americans and that Uncle Sucker is no longer willing to foot the bill. And Britain and many European countries are indeed starting to transfer real resources to build up our hollowed-out armed forces and military-industrial complexes. But the bottom line in Ukraine remains that a ceasefire will be negotiated by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Europe Plus will not be at the table. Its job will be, to put it bluntly, to persuade the Ukrainians to accept whatever carve up the great powers agree. And then to help enforce a ceasefire with boots on the ground in Ukraine — or more likely next door, on the Polish border. 

It suits Starmer, Macron, Europe’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and the rest to pretend that collectively they represent an alternative source of power and security to Washington — an updated version of the long-held British fantasy of playing Greece to America’s Rome. But while Europe indeed has a larger population than the US and a comparable GDP, the key to power is not how softly or loudly you speak but the size of the stick you carry.

On Sunday, Emmanuel Macron suggested Britain and France had drawn up a plan for a one-month truce in Ukraine “in the air, at sea.” In the grand surroundings of Lancaster House, Macron, Starmer and Zelensky worked to draw a peace plan for Ukraine that includes British and French troops as part of a peacekeeping force. That’s not nothing — especially as Washington needs some alternative post-ceasefire security plan to fill the US-shaped hole in funding and military support for Kyiv. But Europe Plus remains very much second fiddle to the veering juggernaut of Trump’s personal diplomacy. 

Plans for a summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, probably in Saudi Arabia, are reportedly being “fast-tracked” after the US president’s public row with Zelensky. According to a senior European official with direct knowledge of direct backchannel talks between Washington and Moscow going back months, the key challenge will be how to secure Putin’s sign off on a European force in or near Ukraine and an upgrade of US-supplied air defenses. That Ukraine will remain neutral, staying out of NATO, and that Putin will continue to hold the land he has seized are both assumed and “not a point on which anyone expects there to be any movement” on the Russian side in upcoming talks, says the official.  

Behind the grand verbiage and the impressive group photos, the true purpose of the London summit was to patch things up between Zelensky and the White House

The Kremlin has previously said that any NATO troops on Ukrainian soil are out of the question — in public at least. And deployment of foreign peacekeepers along the 870-miles-long line of control could prove too much of a tripwire risk for Europe as well. An alternative would be to station a European force in Western Ukraine or just across the Polish border near Przemysl. Another key element to a future deal is a major upgrade to the anti-missile defense capabilities being provided by the US. Known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense or THAAD 2.0, the Lockheed-Martin produced area defense system is based on Patriot interceptors on land and AEGIS antimissile systems at sea. 

Unfortunately, the bottom line for any negotiations is that three years of war and hundreds of billions of dollars Ukraine and its allies have not yet found a way to defeat Russian troops in the field. Nor have sanctions forced the Russian economy to its knees. Neither Ukraine, nor Europe Plus, nor even the United States have a convincing strategy to compel the Kremlin to do anything. The only way to end this war is to cajole or persuade Putin to agree to the terms of a peace deal — and so far, the only world leader in a position to do that is Trump. Yet many European leaders have not yet changed their script. “Ukraine is Europe! We stand by Ukraine,” tweeted Kaja Kallas on Sunday. “We will step up our support to Ukraine so that they can continue to fight back the aggressor. Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.” But the British army, as currently constituted, will struggle to deploy and rotate 10,000 soldiers in the field. The French have a few more, thanks in part to their foreign legion. The Poles have announced that they won’t send troops to Ukraine at all. Europe taking control of its own security would be a great idea. But until billions are spent and thousands recruited, it’s a fantasy.