US-Russia talks should not rewrite Europe’s security: Finland/node/2590464/world
US-Russia talks should not rewrite Europe’s security: Finland
Croatia’s PM Andrej Plenkovic, Iceland’s PM Kristrun Mjoll Frostadottir, Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics and Finnish President Alexander Stubb in Munich. AFPCroatia’s PM Andrej Plenkovic, Iceland’s PM Kristrun Mjoll Frostadottir, Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics and Finnish President Alexander Stubb in Munich. (AFP)
US-Russia talks should not rewrite Europe’s security: Finland
The new US administration has warned its NATO allies that Washington will no longer be primarily focused on the continent’s security and may have to shift forces elsewhere to focus on China
Updated 16 February 2025
AFP
MUNICH: Finnish President Alexander Stubb on Sunday said that talks between the US and Russia over the Ukraine war must not rewrite European security and allow Moscow to establish “spheres of interest.”
Washington blindsided Kyiv and its European backers this week by launching talks on ending Moscow’s three-year invasion in a call with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
The new US administration has also warned its NATO allies that Washington will no longer be primarily focused on the continent’s security and may have to shift forces elsewhere to focus on China.
The Kremlin has pushed for the negotiations to discuss not just Ukraine but also broader European security.
HIGHLIGHTS
• Washington blindsided Kyiv and its European backers this week by launching talks on ending Moscow’s three-year invasion in a call with Putin.
• The new US administration has warned its NATO allies that Washington will no longer be primarily focused on the continent’s security and may have to shift forces elsewhere to focus on China.
That has sparked fears among Washington’s allies that Putin could return to demands he floated prior to the 2022 invasion aimed at limiting NATO’s forces in eastern Europe and US involvement on the continent.
One issue talks “should not discuss is new European security arrangements,” Stubb, whose country shares a 1,300-kilometer border with Russia, told the Munich Security Conference.
“There’s no way we should open the door for this Russian fantasy of a new, indivisible security order, where it can do spheres of interest.”
The stance from the new US administration has sown further concerns in Europe as Trump demands NATO countries spend more on their own defense.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth this week warned that Washington will no longer be primarily focused on the continent’s security and may have to shift forces elsewhere to focus on China.
Stubb insisted that Ukraine’s push to join NATO and the EU should be “non-negotiable,” even after Washington appeared to rule out Kyiv joining the military alliance as part of a peace deal.
Stubb laid out a vision for how negotiations could work — saying that the West should hit Russia with tough sanctions ahead of talks to pile on the pressure.
He said European countries should help support any eventual ceasefire, with the US acting as a “backstop.”
Germans go to vote under shadow of far-right surge, Trump
Frontrunner Friedrich Merz vows tough rightward shift if elected, to win back voters from the far-right anti-immigration Alternative for Germany
The AfD has basked in the glowing support lavished on it by Trump’s entourage, with billionaire Elon Musk touting it as the only party to “save Germany"
Updated 6 sec ago
AFP
BERLIN: German voters head to the polls on Sunday, with the conservatives the strong favorites after a campaign rocked by a far-right surge and the dramatic return of US President Donald Trump.
Frontrunner Friedrich Merz has vowed a tough rightward shift if elected to win back voters from the far-right anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is eyeing a record result after a string of deadly attacks blamed on asylum seekers.
If he takes over from embattled center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz, as widely predicted given a yawning poll gap, the CDU leader has promised a “strong voice” in Europe at a time of chaotic disruption.
The pivotal vote in the European Union’s biggest economy comes amid tectonic upheaval in US-Europe ties sparked by Trump’s direct outreach to Russian President Vladimir Putin over their heads to end the Ukraine war.
Across Europe, NATO allies worry about the future of the alliance, nowhere more than in Germany which grew prosperous under the US-led security umbrella.
However, it may take Merz many weeks to negotiate a coalition government, spelling yet more political paralysis in Berlin during such fraught time.
In a strange twist to the polarized campaign, the AfD has basked in the glowing support lavished on it by Trump’s entourage, with billionaire Elon Musk touting it as the only party to “save Germany.”
Trump, asked about the elections in Germany, which he has berated over its trade, migration and defense policies, said dismissively that “I wish them luck, we got our own problems.”
Merz, in his final CDU/CSU campaign event in Munich on Saturday, said Europe needed to walk tall to be able to “sit at the main table” of the world powers.
Voicing strong confidence, the 69-year-old former investment lawyer told supporters that “we will win the elections and then the nightmare of this government will be over.”
“There is no left majority and no left politics anymore in Germany,” Merz told a raucous beer hall, promising to tighten border controls and revive flagging Germany Inc.
For the next German leader, more threats loom from the United States, long its bedrock ally, if Trump sparks a trade war that could hammer Germany’s recession-hit economy.
Scholz will stay in charge as caretaker until any new multi-party government takes shape — a task which Merz has already said he hopes to achieve by Easter in two months.
Polling stations open at 8:00 am (0700 GMT) with more than 59 million Germans eligible to vote and first estimates based on exit polls expected after polls close at 6:00 p.m. (1700 GMT).
Up to 30 percent of voters remained undecided last week, among them Sylvia Otto, 66, who said that “I still find it difficult to make a decision this time.”
Speaking in Berlin, she said she wanted “a change — but now a change to the right. That’s very important to me.”
At an AfD rally elsewhere in Berlin, a 49-year-old engineer, who gave his name only as Christian, praised the party’s leader Alice Weidel as a “tough woman, stepping on the toes of the other parties.”
These, he said, “are now adopting the AfD’s programs and passing them off as their own. So she is doing something right.”
Germany’s political crisis was sparked when Scholz’s unhappy coalition collapsed on November 6, the day Trump was re-elected.
Scholz’s SPD, the Greens and the liberal FDP had long quarrelled over tight finances.
The SPD’s historically low polls ratings of around 15 percent suggest Scholz paid the price for policy gridlock and Germany’s parlous economic performance at a time the Ukraine war sent energy prices through the roof.
Frustration with the leadership fueled the rise of the AfD, which has been polling at 20 percent but looks set to stay in opposition as all other parties have vowed to keep it out of power.
The AfD, strongest in the ex-communist east, is on track for its best-ever result after Germany was shocked by a series of high-profile attacks in which the suspects were asylum seekers.
In December a car-ramming through a Christmas market crowd killed six people and wounded hundreds, with a Saudi man arrested at the scene.
More deadly attacks followed, both blamed on Afghan asylum seekers: a stabbing spree targeting kindergarten children and another car-ramming attack in Munich.
On Friday, a Syrian man who police said wanted to “kill Jews” was arrested after a Spanish tourist was stabbed in the neck at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial.
While Merz has vowed to shutter German borders and lock up those awaiting deportation, the AfD has argued that Germans will “vote for the original.”
Macron and Starmer to meet Trump as Europeans flesh out ideas for Ukraine guarantees
Visits come amid alarm in Europe amid a rift between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
Britain, France are keen to show Trump they are ready to take on a bigger burden for European security
Updated 40 min 16 sec ago
Reuters
LONDON/PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will travel to Washington next week amid alarm in Europe over US President Donald Trump’s hardening stance toward Ukraine and overtures to Moscow on the three-year conflict.
The leaders of Europe’s two nuclear powers, who will be traveling separately, are expected to try to convince Trump not to rush to a ceasefire deal with Vladimir Putin at any cost, keep Europe involved and discuss military guarantees to Ukraine.
Macron, who is trying to capitalize on a relationship with Trump built during their first presidential terms, has said agreeing to a bad deal that would amount to a capitulation of Ukraine would signal weakness to the United States’ foes, including China and Iran.
“I will tell him: deep down you cannot be weak in the face of President (Putin). It’s not you, it’s not what you’re made of and it’s not in your interests,” he said in an hour-long answer and question session on social media ahead of Monday’s visit to the White House.
The visits come amid a rift between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom Trump described as a “dictator,” that has alarmed Kyiv’s European allies, already reeling from a more aggressive US posture on trade, diplomacy and even domestic European politics.
Philip Golub, a professor in international relations at the American University in Paris, said Trump’s rapid-fire moves in his first weeks in office, as well as the rhetoric from other US officials, had been a major shock for the Europeans.
“They could not have expected that somehow within the United States would emerge this ultra-nationalist coalition of forces that would actually challenge Europe’s voice in world affairs in such a stark and strong way,” he told Reuters.
He said Macron believed he had a “historic role to play” in going to Washington to ensure Europe can weigh in on the ultimate negotiations on Ukraine. “Whether he can actually achieve something, however, in this visit is an entirely different matter,” he added.
Starmer, who has also warned the end of the war cannot be a “temporary pause before Putin attacks again,” will be in Washington on Thursday.
Speaking on a Fox News podcast on Friday, Trump said Macron and Starmer had not “done anything” to end the war. “No meetings with Russia!” he said, although he described Macron as “a friend of mine” and Starmer as “a very nice guy.”
Milittary guarantees
However, the two countries are keen to show Trump they are ready to take on a bigger burden for European security.
Britain and France are firming up ideas with allies for military guarantees for Ukraine and their two leaders will seek to convince Trump to provide US assurances in any post ceasefire deal, Western officials said.
Their respective militaries began initial planning last summer for the post-war scenario, but the discussions accelerated in November after Trump secured the US presidency, a French military official and two diplomats said.
They have also been supported in putting together an array of options by countries like Denmark and the Baltic states as Europeans discuss what they would be ready to do should there be an accord and peacekeepers required, officials said.
Protesters demonstrate at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, on Feb. 22, 2025, in support of Ukraine ahead of the third anniversary of the war with Russia. (AFP)
While both Britain and France have ruled out sending troops to Ukraine immediately, the plans, still in concept stage, center around providing air, maritime, land and cyber support that would aim to deter Russia from launching any future attacks, Western officials said.
Air and sea assets could be based in Poland or Romania, restoring safe international air space and ensuring the Black Sea remained safe for international shipping, the official said.
Part of the British and French talks center around the possibility of sending European peacekeepers. While US boots on the ground may not be necessary, deterrence in the form of US medium-range missiles and ultimately nuclear weapons will remain crucial.
The options being discussed would center not on providing troops for the frontline or the 2,000-km (1,243-mile) border which would remain secured by Ukrainian forces, but further to the West, three European diplomats and the military official said.
Those troops could be tasked with protecting key Ukrainian infrastructure such as ports or nuclear facilities to reassure the Ukrainian population. However, Russia has made it clear it would oppose a European presence in Ukraine.
A French military official said there was little sense in talking numbers at this stage because it would depend on what was finally agreed, what international mandate was given and whether non-European troops would also be involved.
“It’s not about the numbers of troops in Ukraine. It’s the ability to mobilize and the ability to arrange everything into a package of interoperability units,” the French official said.
A Western official said that even 30,000 troops could be on the “high side.”
UK’s decision comes as US President Trump sought to sideline Kyiv and its European backers from talks with Russia on the future of the conflict
EU countries last week agreed a new round of sanctions which includes a ban on imports of Russian aluminum set to be formally adopted on Monday
Updated 23 February 2025
AFP
LONDON: London will unveil a significant package of sanctions against Russia on Monday, which marks three years since the start of its war with Ukraine, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Sunday.
“This is also the time to turn the screws on (Vladimir) Putin’s Russia,” Lammy said in a statement.
“Tomorrow, I plan to announce the largest package of sanctions against Russia since the early days of the war — eroding their military machine and reducing revenues fueling the fires of destruction in Ukraine,” he added.
UK’s decision to ramp up sanctions comes as US President Donald Trump has in recent weeks sought to sideline Kyiv and its European backers from talks with Russia on the future of the conflict.
“This is a critical moment in the history of Ukraine, Britain and all of Europe... Now is the time for Europe to double down on our support for Ukraine,” said Lammy.
London has already imposed sanctions on 1,900 people and organizations with link’s to Putin’s government since the start of the war, as of January 2025.
Its sanctions target the Russian financial, aviation, military and energy sectors, including through bank asset freezes, travel bans, and trade restrictions.
EU countries last week agreed a new round of sanctions which includes a ban on imports of Russian aluminum set to be formally adopted on Monday.
In his statement, Lammy reiterated UK’s military backing, which includes a pledge to provide £3 billion ($3.78 billion) annually to Kyiv and “being ready and willing to provide UK troops as part of peacekeeping forces if necessary.”
“Off the battlefield, we will work with the US and European partners to achieve a sustainable, just peace, and in doing so, remaining clear that there can be nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” Lammy added.
On Saturday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer held separate phone calls with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, repeating a similar message to Lammy’s.
Starmer is headed to Washington to meet Trump on Thursday, hoping to act as a “bridge” between the US and Europe to ensure territorial and security guarantees for Kyiv in the event of a deal to end the war.
The task looks increasingly challenging following a public spat in the last week between Zelensky and Trump, who called the Ukrainian leader a “dictator” and hailed “good talks” with Russia.
Trump also accused Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron of doing nothing to end the war in a Fox News interview on Friday.
European countries fear that if Ukraine is forced into a bad deal by Washington then that will leave Putin claiming victory and the continent at the mercy of an emboldened Moscow.
Polish president says US should have greater presence in Poland, Central Europe
Updated 23 February 2025
Reuters
WARSAW : The US presence in Poland and Central Europe should be boosted, Polish President Andrzej Duda told US President Donald Trump during a short meeting in Washington on Saturday.
“President Trump said he would rather expect a boost of US presence concerning Poland,” Duda told reporters after the meeting.
“I said Poland’s and Central Europe’s security should be boosted, but he said that as one of the most credible allies I should not be worried.”
Duda declined to comment on whether he discussed the recent sharp exchange between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, adding that his impression was that the US president was interested in “making Ukraine stronger, including via economic ties.”
Trump denounced Zelensky as a “dictator” on Wednesday and warned that the Ukrainian president had to move quickly to secure peace with Russia, which invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago, or risk losing his country.
The change in tone from the US, Ukraine’s most important backer, has alarmed European officials and stoked fears that Kyiv could be forced into a peace deal that favors Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump reaffirmed close alliance between US and Poland and praised Warsaw’s commitment to increase defense spending, the White House said on X on Saturday following the meeting.
Trump revels in mass federal firings and jeers at Biden before adoring conservative crowd
Arguing that voters gave him a mandate to overhaul government and crack down on migrants, Trump said his campaign for a leaner bureaucracy will go on
While again mocking his predecessor Joe Biden and election oponent Kamala Harris, he had nice words for China President Xi Jinping
Updated 23 February 2025
AP
OXON HILL, Maryland: President Donald Trump said Saturday that “nobody’s ever seen anything” like his administration’s sweeping effort to fire thousands of federal employees and shrink the size of government, congratulating himself for “dominating” Washington and sending bureaucrats “packing.”
Addressing an adoring crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside Washington, Trump promised, “We’re going to forge a new and lasting political majority that will drive American politics for generations to come.”
The president argues that voters gave him a mandate to overhaul government while cracking down on the US-Mexico border and extending tax cuts that were the signature policy of his first administration.
Trump clicked easily back into campaign mode during his hour-plus speech, predicting that the GOP will continue to win and defy history, which has shown that a president’s party typically struggles during midterm elections. He insisted of Republicans, “I don’t think we’ve been at this level, maybe ever.”
“Nobody’s ever seen anything like this,” Trump said, likening his new administration’s opening month to being on a roll through the first four holes of a round of golf — which he said gives him confidence for the fifth hole.
Trump has empowered Elon Musk to help carry out the firings, and the billionaire suggested Saturday that more might be coming.
“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk posted on X, which he owns. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
A short time later, an “HR” email was sent to federal workers across numerous agencies titled “What did you do last week” and asking that recipients “reply with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.” It cautioned against sending classified information, and gave a deadline of Monday at 11:59 p.m. ET.
Trump also said during the speech that he’d carry out harsher immigration policies. But those efforts have so far largely been overshadowed by his administration’s mass federal firings. He announced that one federal entity with a worforce that had been significantly reduced, the US Agency for International Development, would have its Washington office taken over by Customs and Border Protection officials.
“The agency’s name has been removed from its former building,” he said.
The president also repeated his previous promises to scrutinize the country’s gold depository at Fort Knox.
“Would anybody like to join us,” he said to cheers from the crowd at the suggestion that administration forces might converge on the complex. “We want to see if the gold is still there.”
But Trump also devoted large chunks of his address reliving last year’s presidential race, jeering at former President Joe Biden and mispronouncing the first name of former Vice President Kamala Harris — his Election Day opponent — gleefully proclaiming, “I haven’t said that name in a while.”
He went on to use an expletive to describe Biden’s handling of border security, despite noting that evangelical conservatives have urged him not to use foul language.
Trump had kinder words for Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying “I happen to like” him, while noting, “we’ve been treated very unfairly by China and many other countries.”
On the sidelines of the conference, Trump met with conservative Polish President Andrzej Duda amid rising tensions in Europe over Russia’s war in Ukraine. After he took the stage, Trump saluted Duda and Argentine President Javier Milei, who himself separately addressed the conference.
Trump called Duda “a fantastic man and a great friend of mine” and said “you must be doing something right, hanging out with Trump.” He noted that Milei was “a MAGA guy, too, Make Argentina Great Again.”
Poland is a longtime ally of Ukraine. Trump upended recent US policy by dispatching top foreign policy advisers to Saudi Arabia for direct talks with Russian officials that were aimed at ending fighting in Ukraine.
Those meetings did not include Ukrainian or European officials, which has alarmed US allies. Trump is meeting on Monday at the White House with French President Emmanuel Macron and Thursday with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Trump also has begun a public back and forth with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom the US president called a “dictator” while falsely suggesting that Ukraine started the war — though on Friday he acknowledged that Russia attacked its neighbor.
Trump told the CPAC crowd, “I’m dealing with President Zelensky. I’m dealing with President Putin” and added of fighting in Ukraine, “It affects Europe. It doesn’t really affect us.”
Zelensky has said Trump is living in a Russian-made “disinformation space.”
For much of the time since Russia invaded in February 2022, the United States, under Biden, pledged that Ukraine would play in any major effort to end the fighting, vowing “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” Trump’s administration has dispensed with that notion, as the Republican president has accelerated his push to find an endgame to the war.
“I think we’re pretty close to a deal, and we better be close to a deal,” Trump said Saturday.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later told reporters that Trump and his team were focused on negotiations to end the war in Ukraine and “the President is very confident we can get it done this week,” though such a tight timeline seems difficult.
Later, the president and first lady Melania Trump were hosting dinner at the White House for governors from both parties who were in Washington for a meeting of the National Governors Association.
Leavitt is one of three administration officials who face a lawsuit from The Associated Press on First- and Fifth-Amendment grounds.
The AP says the three are punishing the news agency for editorial decisions they oppose. The White House says the AP is not following an executive order to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
