Meeting in Paris is a flop: no agreement on sending troops for peace-keeping in Ukraine
Both Le Monde and The Financial Times this evening are reporting that the meeting earlier in the day of the heads of government of the most interested EU member states, the secretary general of NATO, the president of the European Council, the head of the European Commission and her Commissioner for External Relations to discuss their response to Trump’s request to list the number of units and equipment they are ready to deploy in Ukraine as peacekeepers and enforce a peace settlement with Russia ended only in discord.
To be sure, Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom said he was ready to deploy troops. The Swedes were more circumspect, saying they ‘do not exclude’ such a possibility. However, German Chancellor Scholz put a firm Nein! to the idea which he called ‘very inappropriate’ and ‘premature.’ Most surprisingly, the viscerally anti-Russian prime minister of Poland Donald Tusk also said his country is not ready to deploy. Tusk knows better than anyone else among his neighbors the might of the Russian armed forces and the wholly underprepared state of Polish military assets.
The meeting in Paris lasted 3 hours and appears to have adjourned without any joint statements, meaning it was a failure for Europe.
Where there are losers on one side, there are winners on the other side. The failure of the Europeans represented a victory for President Trump. When the moment came to ‘put up or shut up’ as poker players say in the States, Europe just shut up. Quite possibly this is precisely what Trump expected when he demanded not generalities about their values but solid commitments of men and materiel from the European allies.
Gilbert Doctorow
Next up is supposedly a 700 billion dollar aid package from the EU, probably spread over 10 years. It remains to be seen how much is intended to support the Ukrainian government, Ukrainian immigrants to EU member countries, and supply of weapons for the war.. |
