The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on Saturday that the time has come for the creation of an “armed forces of Europe” because the United States can no longer be counted to support Europe.
Meanwhile, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz responded to the Americans for ending up the elections of his country after the US vice president JD Vance scolded European leaders for their approach to democracy and met with the leader of an extreme party German right.
The blunt speeches of Zelenskyy and Scholz on day 2 of the Munich Security Conference underlined the impact of a decisions storm of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, which shows a rapid growth abyss in transatlantic ties.
European leaders are staggering after Trump's decision to fly years of American politics by holding conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin hoping to end the Russian-Ukraine war. Trump's special envoy for Ukraine and Russia on Saturday ruled out that Europeans will be included in any Peace conversation in Ukraine.
Increasing its desire for a more muscular and powerful Europe, Zelenskyy said that the three -year struggle of Ukraine against Russia has shown that there is a basis for the creation of a European army, an idea discussed during some continental leaders.
“I really think the time has come,” he said. “Europe's armed forces must be created.”
Zelenskyy alluded to a telephone conversation between Trump and Putin this week, after which Trump said he and Putin would probably meet soon to negotiate a peace agreement on Ukraine, breaking with the toughest line of the Biden administration against Moscow on the Large -scale invasion of Russia of Ukraine in Ukraine in 2022.
Later, Trump assured Zelenskyy that he would also have a seat on the table to finish the war. The Ukrainian leader insisted that Europe should also have one.
“Ukraine will never accept agreements made behind us without our participation, and the same rule should be applied to all of Europe,” said Zelenskyy, adding that “not once (Trump) mentioned that the United States needs Europe at the table.”
“That says a lot,” he said. “The old days have ended when the United States supported Europe just because it had always done it.”
Get daily national news
Get the main news, political, economic and current headlines of the day, delivered to your entrance tray once a day.
“Now, while we fight against this war and feel the foundations for peace and security, we must build the European forces of Europe, said Zelenskyy.
Zelenskyy said his idea was not to replace NATO. “It's about making Europe's contribution to our association equal to that of the United States,” he said.
It is not clear if the idea will be given to European leaders. Zelenskyy has sought greater military and economic support from the European Union for years and repeatedly warned that other parts of Europe could also be vulnerable to Russia's expansionist ambitions.
While the block, together with the United States, has been one of kyiv's strongest sponsors, the foci of political disagreement in the EU on its Moscow approach and economic realities, including national levels of debt that have attributed spending Of defense, they have remained on the way of greater support.
Europeans probably excluded from Ukraine peace conversations
European leaders have been trying to make sense of a new hard line of Washington on issues that include democracy and the future of Ukraine, since the Trump administration continues to fly the transatlantic conventions that have been in force since after World War II.
General Keith Kellogg, a special envoy from Trump for Ukraine and Russia, eliminated Europeans from any Ukraine-Russian conversation, despite Zelenskyy's call to Europe participating.
“You can have the Ukrainians, the Russians and clearly the Americans at the table speaking,” Kellogg said in an event organized by a Ukrainian tycoon. Pressing if that meant that Europeans will not be included, he said: “I am a school of realism. I think that will not happen. “
“We need to make sure of Ukrainian sovereignty,” he said, before adding: the “European Alliance … will be critical for this.”
When asked what would tell Trump if he were at the conference, Radosław Sikorski, Poland's Foreign Minister, said he would remind Trump that the United States had committed to being with Ukraine during the time it takes until ensure your independence.
“The credibility of the United States depends on how this war ends, not only the Trump Administration (but) the United States,” Sikorski warned.
Annalena Baerbock, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany, described the new position of the United States as a “moment of truth” that requires European leaders to exceed their differences and join for significant peace in Ukraine.
“This is an existential moment. It is a time when Europe has to stand up, ”he said. “There will be no lasting peace if it is not a European agreed peace.”
The Prime Minister of Iceland, Kristón Frostadóttir, meanwhile, lamented a lack of clarity of Washington.
“People are still not sure what the United States wants to do. And I think it would be good if we left this conference if they had a clear image of it, ”he said.
The German Chancellor returns to Vance
Previously, Scholz said he was “pleased” for what he called a shared commitment to the United States to “preserve the sovereign independence of Ukraine”, and agreed with Trump that the Russia-Ukraine war must end.
But Scholz also condemned Washington's new political tactics, affirming his strong position against the extreme right and said his country will not accept people who “intervene in our democracy.”
A day before, Vance punished the leaders of Europe at the conference and suggested that freedom of expression is “in retired” throughout the continent. He said that many Americans saw in Europe “entrenched interests that hide behind the ugly words of the Soviet era such as erroneous information and misinformation.”
Vance said that no democracy could survive telling millions of voters that their concerns “are invalid or unworthy of being considered.” He also met with the co-leader of the Alternative Party of the extreme right for Germany (AFD), which is surveying secondly ahead of Scholz's own social democrats before the February 23 elections in Germany.
Referring to the Nazi past of Germany, Scholz said that the long -standing commitment of “never again”, a return to the extreme right, was not reconcilable with the support of the AFD.
“We will not accept that people who look at Germany from abroad intervene in our democracy and our elections and in the process of democratic opinion formation in the interest of this party,” he said. “That has not been done, certainly not among friends and allies. We resolutely reject this. “
“Where our democracy goes from here is for us to decide,” Scholz added.