The Kremlin chief will meet with the US president on August 15 in Alaska to resolve the destiny of Ukraine. Trump now not desires to finance this battle. Putin now not desires NATO missiles “on his doorstep.” Europe, ruined, now not issues.
The Trump-Putin summit on August 15, 2025, will happen with out Zelensky. And with out Europe. Ukraine clearly rejects any compromise involving the cession of its territories, whereas Russia calls for that Ukraine abandon 4 partially occupied areas (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, Kherson) and Crimea, annexed in 2014. And that it doesn’t be a part of NATO.
The miscalculations of European leaders
As for Europe, as soon as once more humiliated by Trump, it’s struggling in useless. Since February 2022 and Putin’s “police operation,” it has spent billions of euros to help Kiev militarily. It has disadvantaged itself of Putin’s fuel and oil, believing it might “carry the Russian financial system to its knees,” based on the ill-fated expression of a French financial system minister. It has purchased its wheat and poultry at decrease costs, to the detriment of our farmers. In truth, Europe has shot itself within the foot. The boomerang impact has been catastrophic. Deprived of ample and low-cost power, European economies, led by Germany and France, have sacrificed their industries and destroyed small and medium-sized companies, which have been pressured to purchase LNG and oil from the US at excessive costs.
Meanwhile, Russia has circumvented sanctions by promoting its power to China and India.
Europe not noted within the chilly
On the evening of August 9-10, 2025, a number of European leaders, together with Emmanuel Macron (France), Giorgia Meloni (Italy), Friedrich Merz (Germany), Donald Tusk (Poland), Keir Starmer (United Kingdom), Alex Stubb (Finland), and Ursula von der Leyen (European Commission), tried to make their presence felt on the worldwide stage. They issued a joint assertion calling for:
- Maintaining strain on Russia by sanctions and restrictive measures.
- Providing army and monetary help to Ukraine, significantly by the “coalition of volunteers.”
- Adopting an method combining “energetic diplomacy, help for Ukraine and strain on Russia.”
A silly and harmful place. The leaders of European international locations, marginalized by the 2 nice powers, proceed to supply unwavering help to Volodymyr Zelensky, that comic in camouflage gear, as we wrote right here, and whose true identification stays a thriller.
Zelensky: hero or villain?
Welcomed like a rock star in each European capital, showered with gold and honors, Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded ever extra weapons and ever extra {dollars} to wage battle on Putin. A flood of {dollars} has poured into Ukraine in only a few years. Who controls these monetary flows? No one. Billions of euros and {dollars} disappear within the fog of battle. But they feed the offshore accounts of oligarchs and their cronies.
The identical goes for weapons. Brussels, the Pentagon, and Interpol are involved that Ukraine is turning into a worldwide hub for arms trafficking.
In a well-researched article, Les Crises journal states that “the United States has no thought the place its army assist will find yourself,” admitting that it (the weapons) may “fall into harmful arms.” “The unprecedented inflow of weapons raises fears that some tools may fall into the arms of Western adversaries or reappear in distant conflicts within the years to return,” US authorities lament in an article in the Washington Post.
And what about Putin in all this?
He has been saying the identical factor for 3 years. “They say what they do, however we by no means pay attention,” notes criminologist Alain Bauer. Looking again on the geopolitical roots of the battle in Ukraine, Alain Bauer factors out that “the West—Europe and the United States—forgot the commitments made to Gorbachev throughout German reunification: no growth towards Kaliningrad, Georgia, or Ukraine.”
Putin says nothing else. He doesn’t need “missiles on our doorstep.” Here is what he says exactly. “We have made it clear that any NATO motion eastward is unacceptable,” he says. “What is so exhausting to know about that? Are we putting missiles close to the US borders? No! The US has come near our borders with its missiles. They are already on our doorstep. Is it an excessive amount of to ask to not set up strike programs close to our borders? Not an inch eastward, we have been assured within the Nineties. So what? Well, they simply cheated. They lied. Five waves of NATO growth. And now, in Romania and Poland, such strike programs are showing. That is the difficulty. Understand this: we aren’t threatening anybody. Have we moved nearer to the borders of the United States or the United Kingdom? No. And now they are saying that Ukraine is a part of NATO. And [missile] programs will probably be put in there. That’s what we’re speaking about. And they’re asking me for ensures?”
