Even as Keir Starmer and his entourage heaved sighs of relief and tried not to grin too broadly as they filed out of the Oval Office after the prime minister’s meeting with Donald Trump, there were some in British circles who were, even then, anxious.
The invitation from King Charles for a second state visit had been handed over to Trump in person and opened before the cameras. Trump, for once, had seemed genuinely lost for words. Starmer had at one point put his hand on Trump’s shoulder like a close friend or relative to emphasise their closeness as the UK delegation looked on, stony-faced but amazed.
In the immediate, choreographed sense, Trump had given Starmer, who had prepared the ground well by committing to increase UK defence expenditure, everything that he could have wished for – and more.
He had praised the PM’s strong negotiating stance on tariffs, lauded the special relationship, past, present and future, and even admired Starmer’s “beautiful accent.” “I would have been president 20 years ago if I had that accent,” Trump said.
But some people with knowledge of Trump’s behaviour down the years, and how he veers from one mood and modus operandi to another within hours or even minutes, noted that some very important things had been left worryingly unclear and unresolved. All was not as well as it might on first impressions have appeared to be.
There were areas where detail was obviously lacking. One was over Europe and Ukraine’s demands that the US must provide a security backstop in the event of any Trump-brokered peace deal. “There was nothing on that. Starmer got nothing,” said one UK source.
It was this same glaring absence that would be exposed less than 24 hours later in another meeting in the Oval Office that went the very opposite of smoothly. This time it led to an explosive row between Trump and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, sitting on the same White House chairs where Starmer and Trump had bonded.
That the British had immediately patted themselves on the back after their Trump meeting was understandable, a Foreign Office source said. “If Trump is in a ‘good host’ mood, being told everything he wants to hear, then it is inevitable that people will think it went well, but there may have been some optimism bias going on, just because it could have been so much worse.”
And so it proved. On Sunday, just three days after having left the White House on such apparently good terms with the US president, Starmer is hosting European leaders in London – the same European leaders who on Friday night wasted no time in sending Zelenskyy strong messages of support after his brutal humiliation at the hands of Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance.
As the on-camera Oval Office meeting went off the rails – after Zelenskyy tried to put his points over security guarantees and Trump told him “you’re gambling with world war three” – Ukrainian ambassador Oksana Markarova buried her head in her hands. Once the media had left, Trump and his team reportedly remained while Zelenskyy and his entourage went to another room.
Ukrainian efforts to get the talks back on track went nowhere. The White House cancelled a working lunch, joint press conference and signing of a deal that would give the US greater access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals. Zelenskyy was asked to leave.
More than 100 reporters then crammed shoulder to shoulder on a driveway outside the West Wing of the White House to watch the Ukrainian president depart in a black SUV. An Australian TV reporter yelled at departing officials: “How do you feel after that Oval Office meeting? Were you brought here for public humiliation?”
Among the Europeans who rallied to Zelenskyy’s side were Friedrich Merz, the German CDU leader whose party won the largest vote share in federal elections in February. He posted online: “We stand with #Ukraine in good and in testing times. We must never confuse aggressor and victim in this terrible war.” On Saturday, Starmer met a bruised Zelenskyy in London and his message was the same.
“It is really hard to keep up. I think Keir is finding out just how hard being the bridge between Trump and Europe is going to be,” observed one British minister.
Before Sunday’s meeting, which will be attended by the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and Denmark among others, and non-EU countries including Canada, Turkey and Ukraine, Starmer put out a statement that leaned towards the Europeans on Ukraine. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Zelenskyy’s spokesperson also said that the Ukrainian president would be meeting the king while in the UK.
Starmer said: “Three years on from Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, we are at a turning point. Today I will reaffirm my unwavering support for Ukraine and double down on my commitment to provide capacity, training and aid to Ukraine, putting it in the strongest possible position.”
In the tumultuous days after Trump won last year’s US election, Ukrainian officials had allowed themselves to hope. They knew Trump was mercurial and deeply unpredictable, but perhaps Trump’s famed deal-making qualities could work to their advantage, they reasoned, three years into a gruelling conflict with Russia.
But any lingering hope that Trump might support their country, or even act as a fair-minded broker between Moscow and Kyiv, died before their eyes on Friday. Zelenskyy’s visit to the White House turned into arguably this century’s greatest diplomatic disaster. Ukraine’s president was the victim of what many observers suspect was not just a brutal but also a premeditated mugging, after meekly suggesting that a peace deal with Vladimir Putin had to come with guarantees.
In a joint onslaught, Trump and JD Vance accused Zelenskyy of disrespecting America. Trump then let it be known he had booted Zelenskyy out of the building. On Saturday, Trump suggested all military assistance to Kyiv would swiftly cease.
Many in Ukraine fear there may be worse to come. Ukrainian engineers are scrambling to find an alternative to Starlink, the satellite internet system owned by Trump’s adviser Elon Musk, which plays a crucial role on the battlefield. Without it, frontline units may lose real-time surveillance drone footage. Meanwhile, if the US turns off the flow of intelligence data, Ukraine will struggle to identify and destroy enemy targets, including those deep inside Russia.
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On Friday, Trump had suggested Ukraine would lose the war “in two weeks” without American help. Zelenskyy countered by pointing out that Putin had expected to seize his country in “three days”. Three years later, Russian troops are still fighting. They are advancing in the eastern Donbas region, village by broken village, but slowly and with enormous losses. Ukrainian forces continue to hold a small piece of enemy territory inside Russia’s western Kursk region.
Zelenskyy acknowledged last week that Ukraine cannot win the war without US support. At the same time, the loss of American weapons may not be as critical as some observers have suggested – at least not in the short term. Ukraine now has the biggest army in Europe, with 800,000 capable soldiers. It is the world’s leading producer of drones, which both sides use extensively across a 600-mile frontline.
But the daunting reality is that, in just a few weeks, the second Trump presidency has crushed eight decades of certainties about the transatlantic alliance. Today, as EU leaders come to London, capital of the Brexited UK, they are discussing how on earth to adapt to an international order that is changing day by day.
“One of the other extraordinary thing about all this,” said a Whitehall source, “is that the UK, after Brexit and all the bad blood involved, really does have a leadership role to play again in Europe.”
The most obvious sign of the shifting tectonic plates came when Merz, a staunch transatlanticist, said his “absolute priority” was strengthening Europe as quickly as possible “so that step by step we can really achieve independence from the USA”.
Merz’s intervention and subsequent warning that it was “five minutes to midnight for Europe” have raised hopes of a revitalised Franco-German relationship, which has languished under Germany’s outgoing chancellor, Olaf Scholz. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, who held broadly positive talks with Trump on Monday in the White House, said hours before that meeting that he anticipated “an unprecedented Franco-German agreement” could soon emerge.
While Trump’s indifference to Europe was well known, Europeans have been genuinely shocked at the speed at which the alliance is unravelling. Last week, the EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, had a meeting with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, abruptly cancelled “due to scheduling issues”, raising speculation she had been snubbed for pointed comments directed at Trump. Two days before her arrival in Washington, Kallas, a former Estonian prime minister and noted Russia hawk, had said the Russian narrative was “very strongly represented” in statements coming from the US.
Trump’s overtures to Putin and attack on Zelenskyy as a “dictator” have cut deep, especially for the countries of central and eastern Europe that were among the staunchest defenders of transatlantic ties. “What a betrayal,” said one senior diplomat.
Another senior European diplomat said the EU was living through “an acceleration of history” where “the need to live up to our responsibilities is much more pressing”. The task is enormous: ensuring military aid for Ukraine while redesigning Europe’s security architecture and increasing defence spending at a time when budgets are under pressure.
The UK and France still hope to persuade Trump to keep the US presence in Europe, while Europe prepares to take much greater responsibility to defend the continent against Russian aggression. But the direction of travel is clear. “We have to be prepared to be on our own,” said the senior diplomat. “The difficulty is that we have to be prepared to do that very quickly. You need to fix the plane while you are in the air.”
“Independence from the US” is a phrase few frontline European politicians would have uttered even six months ago. But it is a concept the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, who is seeking to reduce Europe’s dependencies, whether for defence (the US), raw materials (China) or energy (Russia, until 2022), is having to entertain more as every day passes. She has called for a surge in European defence spending and later this month will publish a defence white paper outlining how the EU can raise funds to meet an estimated €500bn (£412bn) spending uplift the European Commission says is needed over the next decade.
On Thursday EU leaders, this time without Starmer, will gather for a special summit on defence and are expected to call for greater coordination to develop air and missile defence, artillery systems, missiles, drones and equipment to protect “critical infrastructure”, according to a draft text seen by the Observer. Meanwhile, more than five years after Britain left the EU, a pledge to develop an EU-UK security and foreign policy agreement is seen as one of the most promising outcomes of a summit between Starmer and the heads of the EU institutions in May. Difficult choices lie ahead, however: some European diplomats say that if the UK wants to take part in any of the EU’s nascent common defence spending programmes, it will have to sign up to “buy European”, meaning eschewing US-made weapons.
Another EU source told the Observer that two huge issues would need to be addressed at meetings the Europeans will hold during the coming weeks. One was whether they really are prepared to stand with Ukraine and continue taking on Russia if the US pulls away. The second was how they keep Nato intact and strong if the US is playing a lesser role. “It really is a major moment in history,” said the source.
Source: theguardian.com
