Feb. 18, 2025, 6:25 p.m.
MUNICH—European leaders are urgently huddling to coordinate a response after Trump administration officials descended on Europe last week, laying the groundwork to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine while cutting out both Kyiv and the European Union in the process.
The Trump team’s tour began when the newly confirmed Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, arrived in Brussels for his first meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a multinational alliance which coordinates aid for Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion. He declared that returning to Ukraine's borders pre-2014, when Moscow illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, is an “unrealistic objective.” Hegseth also said that Ukraine’s NATO membership is not a practical outcome of a negotiated settlement to end the war. The statements blindsided European leaders and even drew criticism from some Republican members of Congress. Many said Hegseth was trading away substantial leverage by giving the Kremlin what it wanted before negotiations began.
“I’m not the world’s most important and famous dealmaker. But if I were, I would know that I don’t take any essential points of negotiations off the table before the negotiations begin. I would never do that,” said Boris Pistorius, Germany’s popular defense minister, speaking in Munich several days after the event in Brussels. “It makes it much more complicated and difficult.”
Then, at the Munich Security Conference, an annual summit that brings together world leaders, national security experts, and spy chiefs, Vice President J.D. Vance delivered a confrontational speech slamming Washington’s European allies for alleged violation of free speech while refusing to mention the threat from Russia. Officials at the conference noted that Vance’s address was off-target for a transatlantic security event and was geared more toward impressing his boss, President Trump, and domestic audiences. Vance also insulted European leaders, likening them to Soviet “commissars” for refusing to work with far-right groups in their own countries.
On the second day of the conference, attendees were startled by the news that Trump administration officials were heading to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to begin unilateral negotiations with Russia to end the war. Ukrainian officials in attendance said they had not been informed about—nor invited to—the meeting. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later tried to downplay the announcement, stressing that the talks were only preliminary and that the negotiations would eventually include the input of Europeans.
Trump’s envoy for Russia and Ukraine, Gen. Keith Kellogg, remained at the European conference throughout the weekend and was pressed on why the Trump team was sidelining Ukraine and the EU during critical talks. Kellogg argued that the U.S. would consider Europe’s views even if EU officials weren’t at the table.
“To me, that doesn’t mean that the interests are not taken part of, they’re not considered, they’re not used, they’re not developed. That means at the table. You have input,” Kellogg said during a panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference, where Ukraine’s foreign minister joined him.
Jackson Janes, a resident senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, said it was expected that much of this year’s Munich Security Conference would focus on the Americans because of “the unpredictability factor” of the new Trump administration.
“I think we got a taste of that when Mr. Vance gave his speech. It wasn’t exactly a love letter,” Janes told National Journal on the sidelines at the conference. “No mention of Ukraine, no mention of any security issues, which most of us come here to discuss.”
Trump administration officials, meanwhile, spent the week pressing European leaders to commit to specific postwar security guarantees for Ukraine while simultaneously stressing that Washington would not send any U.S. troops to provide security. So far, only the prime minister of the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer, has said his country would offer troops to secure Ukraine after a peace deal if the U.S. also did.
Speaking in Munich, Natalia Pouzyreff, a member of the French National Assembly, said that security guarantees for Ukraine are a matter of political will, noting that Europe needs “a coalition of the willing.”
“I think we more or less agree that Russia is a long-lasting threat. It’s even existential to some countries, like the Baltic countries,” Pouzyreff said. “I don’t see France going on its own, for sure. We need to have partners.”
Many European officials say they are concerned the United States is increasingly acting unilaterally while Europe and Ukraine scramble to catch up. On Monday, France convened an emergency meeting with representatives from Germany, Denmark, Britain, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the Netherlands, as well as the NATO secretary-general and the presidents of the European Council and the European Commission. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron after the meeting.
“We share a common vision: security guarantees must be robust and reliable,” Zelensky said in a statement. “Any other decision without such guarantees—such as a fragile ceasefire—would only serve as another deception by Russia and a prelude to a new Russian war against Ukraine or other European nations.”
Zelensky also stressed that he would not accept the terms of negotiations that do not include Ukraine. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz echoed that sentiment, saying that Europe would not agree to provide security guarantees for Ukraine unless Europe developed the terms.
No significant announcements came out of the meeting in France about the type of security guarantees the Europeans would provide. Meanwhile, following a meeting with Russian negotiators on Tuesday, the State Department said Washington and Russia had agreed to appoint high-level teams to begin working toward ending the conflict. Russia launched ballistic missiles at Kyiv shortly after the meeting ended.
Rubio noted Tuesday, however, that the European Union will eventually need to be involved in negotiations. During a press conference after the meeting, Trump’s new secretary of State suggested that each side would have to make concessions and hinted that sanctions relief might be part of the discussions.
“The European Union is going to have to be at the table at some point because they have sanctions as well that have been imposed,” Rubio said. “The work remains. Today is the first step of a long and difficult journey but an important one. And President Trump is committed to bringing an end to this conflict, as he said when he campaigned for president.”
