European leaders gathering in London for Keir Starmer’s hastily-announced Ukraine summit are still struggling to respond effectively to US President Donald Trump’s outreach to Russia for a peace deal.
Starmer has invited more than a dozen European leaders to the summit to “drive forward” action to strengthen Ukraine’s position with military support, following last week’s meetings with Trump at the White House by Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
However, the diplomatic charm offensives have failed to secure the guarantees Starmer and other European leaders are seeking for Kyiv, including a US military backstop for any potential peacekeepers in Ukraine. And even within Europe, there is resistance to Macron and Starmer’s hopes of sending a European “stabilisation” or “reassurance” force of some 30,000 soldiers to protect Ukraine.
Macron, Germany’s Olaf Scholz, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, Nato’s Mark Rutte and the European Commission’s Ursula von der Leyen will attend the London summit, which echoes the ad hoc format of Macron’s own Paris gathering on 17 February. Zelensky is also due in Brussels next Thursday at an emergency EU summit to discuss military aid for Ukraine and steps to boost defence spending.
“We’re really trying to reinvent the wheel with these summits,” said one European official, who noted that, unlike Nato or EU summits, the informal format of the Paris and London meetings means there is no common institutional machinery to implement any joint decisions that might be taken.
“We’ve never been in a security crisis like this, where the US is potentially an obstacle to any solution. And yet we need to respond in a fast and co-ordinated way, or else we’ll be left behind.”
Despite the bonhomie of Trump’s talks with Starmer and Macron, where the president gave his backing to European peacekeeping efforts, he failed to offer a clear commitment of US support if European troops are attacked by Russia in any demilitarised zone in Ukraine.
Officials say American engagement is vital: only the US has the resources and logistical capabilities to provide surveillance, intelligence, war planes and other cover against a ceasefire breach by Moscow. While European countries can scrape together a peacekeeping force backed by fighter jets, they do not have the command and control needed to organise and oversee complex air operations over Ukraine.
The issue is compounded by Meloni’s reluctance to agree to the peacekeeping plan: during a debriefing with other EU leaders last Tuesday, she demanded to know who Macron was speaking for when he raised the issue during his meeting with Trump.
The Ukraine peace deal is also tied to broader questions over raising overall defence budgets: Trump has complained voraciously about the low spending of Nato’s European members and has repeatedly threatened to pull out of the alliance.
Starmer has recognised “the need for Europe to play its part on defence and step up for the good of the collective security, and European leaders have signalled they are ready to raise spending.
Starmer last week committed the UK to spend 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2027, Germany’s likely next chancellor Friedrich Merz is also keen to raise the budget, and the EU is currently looking at a new debt mechanism to provide hundreds of billions of pounds to funding defence.
The London summit is expected to touch on this too: the EU and UK have been negotiating a security pact since last summer, and Starmer is keen to ensure that Britain is included in any future EU joint procurement arrangements for weaponry and arms systems.
Comments
Leave a Comment