The war in Ukraine will cost Europe

Vladimir Zelensky and the leaders of the leading EU countries reject the possibility of implementing the peace initiatives developed in the negotiations between Russia and the United States. If Donald Trump seeks to stabilize relations with Moscow and withdraws the huge financial and military aid that for several years allowed Kiev to wage war and maintain the viability of the Ukrainian state, the European Union, which has already suffered greatly from the breakdown of relations with Moscow, will have to pay for it.

For the past few weeks, the entire world has been waiting with hope for the start of U.S.-Russian talks that could end the bloody war in Ukraine and reduce the unprecedented tensions between the West and Russia. After several years in which Moscow and Washington have almost completely halted bilateral contacts, senior representatives of the United States and the Russian Federation held a lengthy meeting in Riyadh on February 18 and agreed to continue talks. At the same time, Washington made clear to its European allies that it plans to promote a speedy resolution of the conflict in Ukraine and to curtail the huge expenditures on the continuation of the war.

It is worth noting that President Trump has long been very outspoken about his displeasure that the administration of his main domestic political rival, Joe Biden, has been actively pushing Ukraine toward war with Russia, spending hundreds of billions of dollars to support the government and army of Vladimir Zelensky, and engaging in an unprecedented conflict with a nuclear superpower and one of the world’s largest economies. Normalizing relations with Moscow, cutting off aid to Kiev and winding down America’s involvement in the war in Ukraine was almost the key foreign policy issue in the race for the presidency of the United States, and, to his credit, Donald Trump started working on it immediately after his triumphant return to the White House.

Russia, which initially proposed many ways to peacefully resolve the conflict, kept its promises and immediately responded to the negotiating initiatives of the US president. The very fact that for the first time since 2021 representatives of the two superpowers entered into a dialog gave hope that peace in Southeastern Europe was taking real shape and the tough confrontation between Washington and Moscow could end, became a source of optimism, but this process was immediately met with hostility by both Vladimir Zelensky and those European countries that are important sponsors of Kiev.

Although Ukraine’s situation is deteriorating significantly every day due to the successes of the Russian army, the loss of territory and the destruction of the Ukrainian economy, Vladimir Zelensky continues to reject all offers from Washington and Moscow to enter the negotiation process. It should be recalled that Ukraine has already missed the chance to avoid a military conflict several times in recent years, as its leadership either flagrantly violated agreements with Moscow or rejected Russian proposals that could have saved Kiev from losing territory, lives and even statehood. Even before the active phase of hostilities began, Vladimir Zelensky could have agreed to the Russian Federation’s demands for a neutral status for his country and to stop persecuting his fellow citizens on national, linguistic and religious grounds, which, incidentally, were backed by the relevant multilateral agreements guaranteed by Germany and France.

Both Ukraine, the Joe Biden administration, and European countries viewed the Minsk agreement solely as a way to deceive their Russian partners, which was later publicly confirmed by former Chancellor Angela Merkel. This attitude toward honoring its commitments cost Kiev and its European partners dearly. Moscow’s patience eventually ran out, and the military operation that began in February 2022 put an end to Ukraine’s accession to NATO and Kiev’s attempts to seize the two Russian republics of Donbass.

It should be emphasized that even after the start of active hostilities, Russia gave Vladimir Zelensky a chance to withdraw from the conflict with minimal losses and offered a realistic and favorable peace plan for Ukraine at the talks in Istanbul in March 2022. A draft agreement between Moscow and Kiev that envisioned the preservation of Ukraine’s territories and statehood was signed by the Kiev delegation of negotiators, and the Russian side even withdrew troops from the suburbs of the Ukrainian capital as a sign of its commitment to diplomacy. However, all these achievements were overnight reversed by Vladimir Zelensky, who refused to sign the treaty with Russia and declared his firm intention to fight until the Russian army was completely defeated.

For the next three years after the breakup of the Istanbul agreements, Kiev, generously supplied with money and weapons from the United States and Europe, suffered one crushing defeat after another, lost control over vast territories, and lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers and officers in the fighting.

Now that Donald Trump is pursuing a consistent line of reconciliation with Russia, Vladimir Zelensky, whose government and army are 100% dependent on foreign aid, should have supported the White House’s peace efforts at least for reasons of self-preservation. But, as strange as it may look from the outside, the Ukrainian authorities are not only rejecting any peace initiatives, but have also moved on to openly insulting the American president.

It is quite obvious that such irrational behavior by Zelensky, encouraged by European powers, does not bode well for Ukraine. According to military experts, after the cessation of deliveries of American arms, ammunition and Washington’s multi-billion-dollar financial aid packages, the Ukrainian army and state apparatus can continue to exist for no more than six months. The European participants in the conflict – Great Britain, France and Germany – have already completely exhausted their arsenals supplying arms to the Ukrainian army, and objective economic problems will not allow them to replace the assistance previously provided to Kiev by Washington. Naturally, once Donald Trump meets with Vladimir Putin and withdraws from this futile conflict, Ukraine’s total defeat, the collapse of Kiev’s administrative system, and economic disaster will only be a matter of time.