On Wednesday 19 February, Donald Trump described the Ukrainian president as ‘an unelected dictator… who should never have started this war’. It sounds like a dream, but it’s actually true. The Kremlin’s rhetoric is now coming straight from the mouth of the occupant of the White House. Already last week, the United States and Russia sat down alone at the negotiating table to put an end to the war in Ukraine, without consulting either the main player or its European allies. Their delegations then met on Tuesday 18 February in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, again without the Ukrainian and European leaders. The United States is prepared to accept a peace without the return of the occupied territories and without Ukraine’s integration into NATO. Putin could even obtain the lifting of American economic sanctions and the weakening of Europe’s military.
‘The days when America supported Europe simply because it had always done so are over’, the Ukrainian president had declared a few days earlier at the 61st Munich Security Conference. On Monday 17 and Tuesday 18 February, French President Emmanuel Macron held an emergency meeting with EU and NATO heads of state at the Élysée Palace in an attempt to respond with a single voice to what now looks like a historic turning point in the alliance between Europe and the United States. Next week, he will be received in Washington.
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