Originally written by Arturo Sarukhan

Europe’s inability to act decisively against Russia highlights a deeper problem: without U.S. leadership, the continent is paralyzed.

This past Monday marked the third anniversary of Russia’s unprovoked and premeditated invasion of Ukraine—a significant and painful milestone, not only for Ukrainians but also for Europeans and all those who advocate for a rules-based international order.

Over the past three years, the war has caused devastating human suffering and profound geopolitical consequences. Ukraine has shown extraordinary resilience, with both its military and civilians enduring immense hardships.

Millions have been displaced, cities and infrastructure have been ravaged, and the global geopolitical landscape has shifted—especially following Donald Trump’s return to power and his alarming and disgraceful reversal of the U.S. stance on Moscow’s reprehensible actions.

This shift carries heavy consequences for both Europe and Ukraine.

In recent years, the annual Munich Security Conference, held every February, has been overshadowed by Vladimir Putin’s raw displays of power. In 2022, it took place just days before he launched his assault on Kyiv.

In 2024, opposition leader Alexei Navalny was murdered in a Russian prison. And this year, the conference was marked by the lifeline Trump has thrown to Putin, with Russia now not only in a real position to seize Ukrainian territory but also to dismantle Ukraine as a sovereign state.

At the start of the conference two weeks ago, the persistent threat of an aggressive Russia was compounded by a sudden confirmation of our worst fears about the direction of U.S. policy under Trump.

In a double blow to Ukraine, Trump announced that he had personally called Putin and agreed to begin negotiations to end the war—without Ukraine or its European allies at the table.

Meanwhile, his defense secretary and vice president delivered speeches in Munich that severely undermined transatlantic credibility, the bedrock of Western security since 1945.

Regardless of what happens next, Putin has already secured a diplomatic victory simply by engaging in direct talks with Trump. The U.S. even sat down with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov—who, to this day, remains officially sanctioned by Washington—at a summit in Riyadh.

A clear sign of this dramatic shift is the language now used by the U.S. State Department. In just four weeks, Biden’s “Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression” has become Trump’s “the conflict in Ukraine.”

As Yaroslav Trofimov, chief foreign affairs correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, wryly noted, at this rate, Washington may soon start calling it a “special military operation”—the Orwellian euphemism the Kremlin has used for the past three years to justify its aggression.

The diplomatic rift between the Trump administration and Ukraine deepened further when Trump called Volodymyr Zelensky a dictator. First, Washington pressured Kyiv to withdraw a UN resolution—drafted with European support—to commemorate the war’s third anniversary. Then, in a shameful move, the U.S. aligned itself with Moscow by voting against the resolution, which passed overwhelmingly.

Historical parallels to another Munich—the 1938 appeasement of Hitler, when Britain and France handed over Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland in the hopes of avoiding war—are hard to ignore.

So, too, are comparisons to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in which Hitler and Stalin secretly carved up Poland just days before World War II began. And now, in less than two disgraceful weeks, Trump has set the stage for history to repeat itself.

Yet, while these analogies are fitting, they don’t fully capture the nuances of today’s crisis.

In some ways, the threat to European democracies is even greater than it was 90 years ago. Once again, Europe faces a revisionist and revanchist power willing to risk total war for territorial expansion.

And once again, Western democracies will have no choice but to confront this aggression, whether they want to or not. NATO obligations demand it—especially for countries like Poland and the Baltic states, which fear they may be next.

But unlike in the past, Europe can no longer count on the U.S.—not even as a reluctant latecomer, as it was in 1941.

Despite Trump’s claims that Putin “wants peace,” there is no real indication that the Kremlin is willing to consider any path other than coercion and aggression. Russia’s neighbors within NATO are well aware of this and are ramping up their military spending while reinforcing the defensive line stretching from the Arctic to Central Europe.

But unlike in 1939, Western Europe is even less prepared for conflict. Decades of relying on the U.S. for security have left European militaries weak and underfunded. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte recently warned the European Parliament that if EU member states don’t drastically increase defense spending, their only choices will be “learning Russian or moving to New Zealand.”

Even though the war is taking place on the continent’s eastern edge, Russia has been attacking its perceived adversaries across Europe—not just with missiles and drones in Ukraine but also through cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, and acts of sabotage carried out by proxies.

The real danger for Europe lies in the convergence of three critical factors: America’s retreat, Europe’s denial, and Russia’s aggression. Caught between Putin and now Trump, Europeans are finally facing a reality they have long tried to avoid.

When it comes to Ukraine, Putin has, in many ways, already achieved what he wanted: the chance to negotiate directly with the U.S. over Ukraine’s fate—bypassing both Kyiv and Europe—while simultaneously rehabilitating Russia’s diplomatic standing.

Moscow claims it is ready to negotiate, but always based on Putin’s so-called “peace proposal” from 2024, which reads more like an ultimatum: Russia would keep all occupied Ukrainian territories (as well as some still under Ukrainian control), Ukraine would be barred from joining NATO, and Western sanctions against Russia would be lifted. In other words, Russia is willing to “negotiate”—but strictly on its terms. And Trump seems eager to accept, if only so he can boast that he “brought peace to Europe.”

Despite Zelensky and European leaders’ desperate efforts to win Trump’s favor, it is now clear that the U.S. is no longer a reliable or trustworthy partner—and won’t be for the next four years. If Vice President J.D. Vance’s Munich speech denouncing European democracy didn’t make that clear enough, the Trump administration’s attempted extortion of Zelensky—demanding 50% of Ukraine’s present and future mineral wealth, not in exchange for future U.S. support but as compensation for past military aid under Biden—should remove any remaining doubt. These demands would amount to a greater share of Ukraine’s GDP than the reparations imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

At the end of the day, Europe’s inability to act decisively underscores a deeper issue: without American leadership, the continent is paralyzed. But for Ukrainians, what’s at stake couldn’t be more critical.

Soon, they may be forced to choose between surrendering territory without any security guarantees from the U.S. or continuing to fight without American support—two options that almost certainly pave the way for a much larger Russian victory.

The irony is that Putin’s original strategy for victory always depended on eroding international support for Ukraine and fracturing the transatlantic alliance. After three years of battlefield failures, Trump’s return to the White House may finally give the Kremlin exactly what it wanted.

Source: ElFinanciero.com.mx

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