Antonio Kostadinov
While the echoes of the Munich Security Conference were still reverberating on the European political scene, the US pushed Europe and Ukraine to the periphery. The United States did not include Europe and Ukraine in the talks in Saudi Arabia's capital, which marked the start of the restoration of relations between Washington and Moscow after they had been frozen for almost three years due to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The words of US Vice President J.D. Vance at the Munich conference also left a bitter aftertaste. He ignored the biggest geopolitical threat facing Europe and Ukraine itself - namely Russian military aggression and the tearing up of territories from a sovereign country - and instead spoke, in the manner of the billionaire Elon Musk, about 'freedom of speech'. More precisely, that it is not Russia or China that is the biggest threat to the Old Continent, but "the growing censorship".
Vance also criticised the attempts to isolate and marginalise the far-right ‘Alternative for Germany’ party and even the cancellation of the first round of the presidential election in Romania, won by the far-right pro-Russian candidate Călin Georgescu, following investigations into irregularities and unregulated interference and advertising via TikTok.
J.D. Vance's words have also sparked an unusual alliance between Olaf Scholz and the candidate to be Germany's next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). They condemned the statement by the US Vice-President and called on the US not to interfere in the country's domestic politics.
Europe, especially Germany, has a painful historical experience of allowing extreme ideologies into the political arena: Adolf Hitler came to power and started the Third Reich in 1933 without a revolution or a coup, but entirely constitutionally and through elections. We know the rest of it from history, except that in World War II the United States stood alongside Europe to defeat the evil empire in the face of Hitler's Germany.
Now, the new US administration is talking about rapprochement and hinting at lifting sanctions against an aggressor country with imperialist ambitions to restore the spheres of influence of the countries of the collapsed USSR and the Eastern bloc. Trump reiterated one of the Kremlin's main propaganda narratives for launching the full-scale invasion - namely that they did not start the war, that they did not attack anyone, and that the blame for the conflict actually lies with Kyiv and Zelensky himself, who almost started the conflict.
In this case, again, a startling parallel with history has emerged. On the evening of August 31, 1939, SS soldiers seized the German radio station in Gleiwitz. They broadcast a message in Polish calling for armed action against Germany. The idea was to spread the delusion that Polish soldiers had attacked and seized the radio station - a propaganda ploy to mislead the German public and formally justify the invasion of Poland that began on 1 September 1939.
The parallels with Russia are there - on February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin justified the "special military operation" precisely by protecting the Russian-speaking population, and in the days before, the US warned that Moscow was preparing for just such an operation under a false flag, accusing Ukraine of provocation and attack to justify its full-scale invasion.
Deal or no deal
Trump 2.0 in the US has set the alarm in much of Europe, as well as Ukraine, which has been under the target of a full-scale Russian invasion for three years now. Concerns have largely proved justified. On the one hand, the EU is preparing for a trade war with the U.S. after Trump repeatedly threatened the EU with tariffs, and tried to take Greenland from Denmark as a purchase.
On the other, however, the EU and Kyiv were cynically ignored in talks between US and Russian diplomats in Riyadh. Although the US Secretary of State has subsequently clarified that the EU and Ukraine would certainly be 'consulted' at some point in the negotiations, this has in no way mitigated the consequences of this resounding slap against the Ukrainians, who have been bravely defending themselves for three years now, resisting both Russian aggression and European political leaders.
The connotation of the term 'consultations' in this case means that ultimately Brussels and Kyiv are more like 'outside' observers whose positions, comments and views will be heard but not necessarily taken into account. Thus, the most directly affected parties, including the victim of Russian military aggression, are marginalised to such an extent that they are given a 'consultative' role. And whoever violated the UN Charter as well as a number of international regulations by invading a sovereign country in the 21st century sits shoulder to shoulder with the United States, which until now has been an unfailing donor and ally of Kyiv with military and financial assistance to repel Russian aggression.
At the same time, the contours of President Donald Trump's geo-economy are emerging. Tariffs and the threat of trade war remain a real danger. However, alongside the meeting of US and Russian diplomats in Riyadh, the first tremor that shook the European status quo even before he took office remained in the background - Trump's demand to 'buy' Greenland, ignoring the fact that it is an autonomous territory of Denmark.
He also wants to acquire the Panama Canal, refusing to rule out the use of military or economic coercion to acquire these two territories. The US President has even spoken several times about annexing Canada, saying that he is serious in these intentions. He has also, in a most unceremonious manner for international law and good neighbourly relations, even referred to Canada as the 'fifty-first state' and called the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, Governor.
This was followed by the demand for a deal between the US and Ukraine - for Kyiv to give Washington access to Ukraine's $500 billion worth of rare minerals in compensation for US military and financial aid, including that given by the Joe Biden administration. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sensibly refused the deal, as he demanded that such an agreement be directly tied to security guarantees that would prevent new Russian aggression against the country.
Ukraine has key rare metals, including some 500,000 tonnes of lithium. But the problem is that Trump wants to exploit the deposits of a country undergoing a full-scale war. According to various estimates, Moscow has managed to occupy at least two lithium deposits, one in Donetsk and one in Zaporizhia Oblast, and Kyiv still holds control of a lithium deposit in Kirovograd Oblast.
About 40% of Ukraine's metals are also under Russian occupation. The future peace agreement, which is supposed to freeze the conflict and draw the border, must also address this problem. If this is the case, and if Trump really does claim to be a 'peacemaker' and to lead a pragmatic geo-economy, it would not be fair for Washington to demand such an unfair deal to exploit USD 500 billion worth of key minerals and rare elements, given that some of these deposits are located in territories under Russian occupation. That is, some of the natural resources are going directly into Russia's hands, which will only be to its advantage, as its economy is in a military rut and the occupied Ukrainian natural resources could help in Moscow's over-militarisation - and this is a direct threat of new potential aggression in the future.
Not surprisingly, after Zelensky's refusal, Trump fired a volley of accusations and insults - that Ukraine started the war and even that the Ukrainian president is a dictator. The new owner of the White House has thus once again revealed his sympathy for his Russian counterpart, whom he has never called a "dictator". Instead, Trump has referred to Putin as "smart" and a "strong leader."
Europe's reaction
The echoes of the Munich security conference continued to rumble, and the bitter aftertaste of the Riyadh meeting left the European political scene in a stupor and cognitive dissonance while resisting attempts to further divide the Old Continent into spheres of influence and Yalta 2.0. It is the Russian head of state who is hoping for a new Yalta conference of sorts, since the Kremlin has repeatedly reiterated its demands that NATO return to its 1997 borders.
Meanwhile, after Munich, French President Emmanuel Macron reacted with an emergency meeting at the Palace of Versailles, where on 17 February he brought together the leaders of seven NATO countries - Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark. Two days later, Macron organised a second meeting, now with a broader membership of 19 countries, including Canada and Bulgaria, with most of the countries joining remotely, in an attempt to coordinate a unified and common European response following the abrupt change of US foreign policy course towards Ukraine.
With Yalta 2.0 looming, however, we see that this time the division is not just along the axis of Eastern and Western Europe. Against the backdrop of economic and political problems in Germany, the EU's largest economy and military power, and France, European NATO countries will have to look for another pillar to stabilise the security of the Old Continent. This could be taken over by the UK - and we have seen the first signs of London's readiness to do so after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was prepared to send up to 30,000 troops to guarantee peace in Ukraine in a ceasefire.
The EU should look for a way to cooperate more closely with the UK amid the unpredictability of the new administration overseas, as well as Musk's attempt to interfere in the domestic politics of various European countries, including the UK.
Russian aggression in Ukraine served as a catalyst for NATO's direct expansion after Sweden and Finland gave up their neutral status and joined the alliance. The looming crisis in transatlantic relations between Europe and the US could be a catalyst for consolidating and integrating the EU as the UK is drawn back into its orbit: a Franco-German plan was drawn up in 2023 to open the door to associate membership of the EU after Brexit, which could serve as one initial foundation.
Amid the strained relations between Canada and the US, another idea, albeit more exotic, is being talked about more and more in the public domain: Canada joining the EU instead of becoming the "51st state" of the US. Since the inauguration of the new Trump administration, there are signs of Ottawa gravitating towards the EU orbit.
This was evident in the second emergency meeting on Ukraine called by Macron - Canada was the only non-European country present. So in line with all the geopolitical turbulence in recent weeks and the expected turmoil over the next 4 years from the new US administration, the reasonable question increasingly arises - why not? For unlike the post-World War II period when the US initiated the $400 million Truman Doctrine, which deterred Greece and Turkey from becoming satellites of the USSR, Europe now seems to have been abandoned by its transatlantic partner and ally.
Therefore, the EU must use this window of shifting geopolitical layers and, in addition to trying to attract a closer partnership with the UK and Canada, it must necessarily accelerate Ukraine's EU membership to prevent a Yalta 2.0 on the Old Continent.
