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EU leaders presented a demonstration of solidarity on Thursday with Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a summit conceived as a response to the hostile treatment of the Ukrainian president by the Trump administration in the United States.
Five days after Zelenskyy was ejected from the White House Following a confrontation which led the United States to suspend military aid and intelligence support in kyiv, it was promised to support “sustainable” by all the leaders of the block except.
They also undertook to increase their own defense capacities in the face of an uncertain transatlantic connection.
The Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán refused to support the declaration, forcing the other 26 leaders to issue a text without him.
“Dear Volodymyr, we have been with you since the first day,” said António Costa, president of the European Council, who chaired the leaders’ summit. “We continue to be with you now, and we will continue in the future.”
The split underlines the significant geopolitical change created by Trump’s embrace on Russia. Zelenskyy, who joined the Ue Lunch leaders later said: “It is very important that the Ukrainians are not alone. We feel it and know it.
The leaders, with the exception of Orbán, called kyiv and other European capitals to participate in any negotiations on the future of Ukraine. Trump has opened bilateral peace talks with Russia who do not imply Kyiv or Brussels.
However, the White House has seemed to soften its position towards Ukraine in recent days. Thursday, Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said that the administration was in talks to organize a meeting with a Ukrainian delegation in Saudi Arabia to agree with a framework for “a peace agreement and an initial cease-fire”.
Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary for Defense, said the American freezing to provide weapons to kyiv was a “break, while waiting for a real commitment to a path to peace”, adding that the White House was “very encouraged by the signs we see”.
The joint declaration of the EU nods to the increase in military support for Ukraine and the will of the States to “contribute to security guarantees according to their respective skills and capacities” to a post-conflict state.
Orbán said Trump’s position on war means that EU’s support in Ukraine was to change.
“This does not matter in what form we express our support for Ukraine, just that we do,” said a diplomat involved in talks. “At this particular stage, it would be disastrous not to do it.”
A separate declaration, agreed by the 27 EU leaders, has approved new defense financing initiatives proposed by the Commission. These include changes in the block debt and deficit rules to exempt an increase in defense expenses, and an instrument that would provide 150 billion euros in capital loans to spend for military capacities.
The two ideas have received broad political support, but the details of the two still have to be negotiated before the governments approved.
“Europe must become more sovereign, more responsible for its own defense and better equipped to act and treat immediate and future challenges independently with a 360 ° approach,” said the 27 leaders in the press release, which does not refer to the United States.
The loan instrument, targeting specific capacities, including air defense and drone systems, would be “as flexible as possible with as few attached channels,” said an EU official, to ensure rapid adoption. He would use the existing NATO criteria to ensure that it was properly spent, they added.
The structure allows the Commission to bypass a ban on the EU treaty on direct military expenditure by rather strengthening the production of European defense industry. Part of this production could be used to arm Ukraine.
Additional Alice Hancock reports in Trowbridge
