The emergency summit in Paris was, in many respects, Shakespearean. There was a lot of pathos, many well-taken pictures, an exquisite room, a good deal of suspense, and several big statements before it.
Polish PM Donald Tusk tweeted that it is necessary to spend big on defense now to avoid trouble in the future, while European Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyen wrote, “Europe’s security is at a turning point. Yes, it is about Ukraine — but it is also about us. We need an urgency mindset. We need a surge in defense. And we need both of them now.”
British PM Keir Starmer took an even bolder stance saying that he’s ready to deploy British troops “in harm’s way” as it is essential for any peace plan.
All these developments and statements took place following the not-so-enjoyable Munich Security Conference, which, according to different media reports, ‘stunned’ and ‘shocked’ Europe, with the narrative turned that it was unacceptable that Europe is being left out of the negotiation process and that it must act now.
While it is not entirely clear what came as a surprise in Munich as President Donald Trump made it crystal clear during his first tenure that he views NATO as a transactional military club where each has to pay for their defence, or why Germany was outraged by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s statement that NATO is off the table for Ukraine given that Berlin obstructed it for almost two decades now, it is indeed so that he new US administration views the world through the traditional realpolitik lens.
Ukraine is not an equal in this setup, regardless of its bravery or battlefield achievements. Europe could be a player, but just because the US knows “who to dial in Europe”, does not mean it necessarily wishes to do so.
It is for this reason that the summit in Paris was anticipated with such high expectations. The Russo-Ukraine war is happening on its continent, and it only makes sense for the countries close to it and directly affected by the conflict to step up after three years of talk and prevailing action.
Before the summit, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Europe to nominate a special peace envoy almost immediately. Technically, it could have been Kaja Kallas, as her position as the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy was supposed to solve Henry Kissinger’s urban legend.
But already before the summit, some developments indicated that it’d not be a success as a host of countries expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that Macron did not invite them. This includes countries like Czechia, which made a significant contribution to Ukraine’s defence, including by launching an ammunition supply initiative.
However, it was the messages that came during it that showed that the summit is not looking to produce any meaningful results.
Polish PM Donald Tusk discarded the idea of deploying Polish troops to Ukraine, while Germany’s lame duck Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who will almost certainly be ousted in the upcoming snap election, went a step further, saying that the talk of making that move, which is essential to preventing Minsk 3.0, is “annoying” him because “now isn’t the right time to discuss that.”
These statements were, in one way or another, echoed by others, including Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock and Italian PM Giorgia Meloni who labeled the summit as “anti-Trump”, with Macron and Starmer being reportedly the only ones who seriously considered the idea – though not unconditionally.
The results of this summit were summarized by President Emmanuel Macron’s tweet where he emphasized that he spoke with Donald Trump (and had a frank conversation just minutes before it commenced) as well as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The conclusion, however, is likewise Shakespearean: it was much ado about nothing where a group of the same people agreed that Ukraine needs strong and lasting peace and strong security guarantees but failed to answer as to how.
The leaders also effectively turned a blind eye to Ukraine’s request for it to nominate a peace envoy, further undermining their chances of being involved in the negotiations process in any meaningful way.
If there’s any silver lining in all this, it’s that Germany’s Foreign Minister Baerbock told Bloomberg on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference that “we are launching a major package, one that has never been seen on this scale before”, stating that it could possibly reach $700 billion and that NATO’s chief Mark Rutte said that Europe is ready to take charge of the security guarantees for Ukraine.
Much now depends on what happens following the questionably prolific conversations between US delegation led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Russian delegation headed by Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov. While they agreed to create working groups to eliminate “the triggers” in the bilateral relations, the Russians also discarded the idea of the European peacekeeping deployment right after the meeting and made it clear that it was too early to talk about the Trump-Putin meeting.
Without the peacekeepers, however, the entire idea of Trump’s peace plan is rendered effectively void as the idea of the policed “buffer zone”, which was voiced already last summer by Vance, is an essential component of any ceasefire that both Trump and Vance seek due to their own political goals.
Trump is willing to show that he’s able to strike deals and stop wars on his watch while Vance is eyeing the presidential election in 2028.
Military failures for both would be unwelcome, with Trump making it clear that while he’s prepared to strike a deal in the current setup, he’s not ok with Putin going on in Ukraine, saying “because if he’s going to go on, that would have been a big problem for us, and that would have caused me a big problem, because you just can’t let that happen.”
So, if the talks in Saudi Arabia were indeed to “test the water,” then it’s quite shallow.
