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Agence France-Presse

French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will meet US President Donald Trump separately at the White House this week to try to convince him to stick by Ukraine.
Trump’s sudden shift on Kyiv has shaken the transatlantic alliance to its core, prompting European leaders to journey across that same ocean in a desperate bid to shore it up.
Fears were growing in European capitals that the bond forged from the ruins of World War II was on the verge of collapse as Trump pursues talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In Trump, many see a president who has abandoned the traditional US view of a rules-based world order in favour of a nationalist, great power game with Moscow and Beijing.


That has caused panic on a continent that has relied on US security assurance for 80 years.
“The Europeans are running around with their hair on fire,” Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia programme at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, told Agence France-Presse.
For his part, Trump insists that he is just seeking peace in Ukraine.
“I think that President Putin and President Zelensky are going to have to get together. Because you know what? We want to stop killing millions of people,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.
But Trump’s embrace of Kremlin talking points on Ukraine – calling President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator without elections” and blaming Ukraine for Russia’s 2022 invasion – has caused alarm in Europe.
It has also reinforced suspicions that Trump is effectively pulling the plug on decades of US support for Europe. In Trump’s view, European officials fear, the United States, Russia and China will instead look after their own spheres of influence closer to home.

“You know, it doesn’t affect the United States very much. It’s on the other side of the ocean,” Trump added on Friday about the Ukraine war.
Even in his first term he threatened to pull out of the Nato military alliance and questioned why the United States spends huge amounts on keeping troops in Europe.
Trump’s meetings with Macron on Monday and Starmer on Thursday could therefore be testy.
Macron said he would tell Trump not to be “weak” on Ukraine. Britain and France have both offered to send peacekeepers in the event of a deal to end the war, but Starmer has pushed for a US “backstop”.
Trump for his part accused both leaders of doing “nothing” to end the Ukraine war over the past three years.
Many Europeans are also realising that the writing could be on the wall.

“We experience now quite a difficult and very dangerous moment when both parts of the transatlantic community, so to say, are getting more and more away from each other,” former Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki told Agence France-Presse at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) near Washington.
For Nigel Gould-Davies, Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, it was an “unprecedented transatlantic crisis”.
“By negotiating with Russia over European heads and intervening in European politics, the United States is not only decoupling from, but deciding for and disrupting Europe,” he said in a commentary.
The question now is whether Europe – after years of talking about how they need to take more responsibility for their security umbrella in case of a rainy day – will do so now that day has come.
Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said on Wednesday that Europe “has to do much more in order to defend ourselves, but also in order to support Ukraine. Because we are in a very, very critical period in world history”.
The European Union’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas on Tuesday separately urged the United States not to walk into “traps” set by Russia as it attempts to divide the West.
But for analyst Bergmann, it could also be a wake-up call for Europe.
“I think what is being asked of Europe now is not just to simply do a bit more – but is for Europe to effectively take actions that would make it emerge, frankly, as a superpower,” he said.


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Donald Trump

Trump shakes transatlantic alliance with sudden Russia pivot

US President Donald Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference annual meeting in National Harbor, Maryland on Saturday. Photo: Reuters

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir in Helsinki, Finland in 2018. File photo: TNS 

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron. Photo: AP

Ukraine’s Zelensky offers to give up presidency for Nato membership

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at a press conference in Kyiv on Sunday. Photo: AP

The aftermath of a Russian air strike in Kryvyi Rih, central Ukraine. Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine via EPA-EFE

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday. Photo: AP

Russian President Vladimir Putin at a wreath-laying ceremony in Moscow. Photo: Sputnik via Reuters

EU leaders to head to Kyiv, Macron to visit Trump in bid to shore up support for Ukraine

French President Emmanuel Macron, right, and British prime Minister Keir Starmer at the Elysee Palace in Paris on Monday for a meeting on the Ukraine war. Photo: AFP / Getty Images / TNS

US expects mineral deal with Ukraine to be signed this week

The open pit mine of Zavallievsky Graphite in Zavallia, Ukraine. Photo: Reuters

Ukraine’s Zelensky calls for strong US ties after Trump brands him a dictator

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky greets US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv on Thursday. Photo: AFP

US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk aboard Marine One on Wednesday. Photo: Reuters

Ukrainian servicemen conduct a field training exercise in an undisclosed location in the Donetsk region. Photo: AFP

Rubio leading US delegation to Saudi Arabia for talks with Russia on Ukraine

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio boards a plane at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on February 1. Photo: Reuters

US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. Photo: AFP

Russian media coverage of the recent phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump. Photo: Reuters

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Trump will meet French and UK leaders as uncertainty grows about US ties to Europe and Ukraine


Trump will meet French and UK leaders as uncertainty grows about US ties to Europe and Ukraine.
