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Good morning. The moment of which European capitals have long been afraid arrived yesterday evening, as US President Donald Trump, fresh off a 90-minute telephone call with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, announced he was starting bilateral peace talks with the Kremlin to finish the war in Ukraine — leaving Europe out within the cold.
Here, I try to capture the sense of deep trepidation attributable to Trump’s announcement. And Laura reports on the collapse of coalition talks in Austria that many thought would bring the far right into power.
Spectators
“Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” has been Europe’s mantra for greater than three years. When that was eviscerated last night with Donald Trump’s convivial peace talks invitation to Vladimir Putin, the penny dropped that Europe, too, had been sidelined.
Context: European governments have long argued that they must be a part of any potential peace talks so as to make sure the continent’s long-term defence and security architecture and contain any future threat of aggression from Russia.
“We each talked concerning the strengths of our respective nations, and the good profit that we are going to some day have in working together,” Trump gushed about his chat with Putin, a person that the majority EU capitals view as a war criminal.
Trump’s decision to start bilateral negotiations with Moscow shatters any illusions that Brussels could play a job in shaping the outlines of any peace deal. To compound Europe’s sense of powerlessness, Trump later added that Saudi Arabia can be prone to play middleman.
European officials, essentially kept at the hours of darkness about Trump’s Ukraine plans since his election, were clutching to the hope of using bilateral meetings in Munich today and tomorrow with Keith Kellogg, ostensibly the president’s official Ukraine envoy, to collect some insights and check out to influence the White House.
Those already far-fetched fantasies were wholly dashed when Trump didn’t even name Kellogg as certainly one of his four-man negotiation team.
Europe’s dread is two-fold.
First, a fear of getting to pay — through reconstruction funds, arms supplies and peacekeeping troops on the bottom in Ukraine — to implement an agreement they won’t have negotiated.
Second, the fear that Trump may agree terms that ignore the continent’s broader security concerns, which Putin could exploit to bring future pressure against other countries.
Those fears were fanned by Trump’s defence secretary Pete Hegseth insisting yesterday that Ukraine would never join Nato, that US troops would never be deployed there, and that restoring Ukraine’s lost territory was an “unrealistic objective”.
“We wish to debate the way in which forward with our American allies,” France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, the UK, Ukraine and the EU said in a joint statement issued following a gathering of foreign ministers in Paris last night.
“Ukraine and Europe have to be involved in any negotiations,” they added, in hope fairly than expectation.
Spokespeople for European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte declined to comment when asked for his or her response to Trump’s announcement.
Chart du jour: Surge
European stocks ticked up yesterday on hopes of a Ukraine peace deal, continuing this 12 months’s upward trend. The Russian rouble also jumped.
Sigh of relief
The European Council won’t add one other far-right leader to its table for now, as coalition talks in Austria led by the Freedom Party under Herbert Kickl have fallen apart, writes Laura Dubois.
Context: The far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) and the conservative People’s party (ÖVP) entered negotiations in January, following mainstream parties’ failure to form a cordon sanitaire against the FPÖ, which had come first in September elections.
But FPÖ leader Kickl handed his mandate to form a government back to President Alexander Van der Bellen yesterday. In a letter to the president, he said discussions on the division of presidency portfolios “weren’t successful”.
Kickl, known for his pro-Russian views, had demanded his party lead the inside ministry — something that was unacceptable for his prospective government partners for security reasons.
“We received quite a few warnings from inside the country and from abroad that the co-operation of intelligence services can be at risk if the Freedom party were to appoint the inside minister,” said ÖVP leader Christian Stocker.
The FPÖ controlled the inside ministry between 2017 and 2019, when it was the junior partner in a coalition with the ÖVP under Sebastian Kurz. At the moment, most allied foreign intelligence agencies stopped co-operation with Austria in consequence.
That government later collapsed after the party’s leadership was filmed soliciting political favours from a fake Russian oligarch’s niece they believed had the backing of Vladimir Putin.
With those credentials, officials in Europe might be respiration a sigh of relief that Kickl won’t be the following Austrian chancellor in spite of everything — for now. If latest elections were held, the FPÖ can be expected to extend its share of the vote, something Kickl might need been banking on.
Van der Bellen yesterday urged the mainstream parties to seek out a compromise and said he would assess one of the best ways forward over the approaching days.
What to look at today
Nato defence ministers meet in Brussels.
European parliament president Roberta Metsola begins a two-day visit to Israel and Palestine.
Now read these
Trade winners and losers: Who can still stop the US president’s tariffs? Alan Beattie argues neither international nor domestic courts can stop Trump’s plans to slam more tariffs.
‘Strategic necessity’: Because the US slashes its foreign aid, the EU must step up not only out of ethical duty — but since it’s in its interest, argues Hadja Lahbib.
Back to the longer term: Trump has also vowed to make America the “crypto capital of the planet”. Can he make bitcoin useful?
Join me and expert colleagues as we debate Europe’s challenges and the fallout of the German election on this exclusive FT webinar on February 27. Register and send us your questions here.
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