Panorama 02.05.2025

Euranet Plus Panorama is a weekly news review that showcases our network’s wide-ranging coverage of EU-related stories.

Radio România Internațional, 05.05.2025, 15:11

Strike a pose, if not a peace deal

Some 100 days after Trump’s inauguration and with Ukrainian cities under continued Russian bombardment, the image of Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky sitting face to face in St Peter’s Basilica struck a chord.

The peaceful tone of this meeting on Saturday (26 April) sat in sharp contrast to the aggressive tenor of the one that played out in front of the world’s media at the White House in February. And afterwards, the Ukrainian president posted that it had been a “historic” moment, raising hopes of a possible ceasefire in Ukraine.

Cautious optimism and scathing criticism

At a meeting in Berlin on Monday, it would be fair to say that new German chancellor Friedrich Merz sounded cautiously optimistic – cautiously being the operative word.

Friedrich Merz, Chancellor of Germany (in German):
“With last Saturday’s meeting in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, we are hopeful that this could perhaps be the beginning of a serious peace process in Ukraine, one worthy of the name. But we also know that everything could look completely different tomorrow.”

But, as AMS reports, Merz is 100 per cent against imposing peace on Ukraine.

Friedrich Merz, Chancellor of Germany (in German):
“This is incompatible with a dictated peace or submission to militarily created facts. Especially not against the will, against the declared will, of Ukraine itself. We hope and advocate that we in Europe will see it this way together. And we hope and advocate that our American partners will share this view with us Europeans in the long term.”

According to Reuters, the latest US peace proposal sets out that Ukraine would be fully reconstructed and compensated financially (although it gives no information on where this money would come from). It also states that post-war Ukraine would receive security guarantees (in this case, notably from Europe). Kyiv would also regain control of the contested nuclear power plant and the (destroyed) Kakhovka Dam.

Meanwhile, Crimea would be ceded to Russia, and four other regions currently occupied by Russian forces would be “de facto” recognised as Russian. In addition, sanctions on Russia would be lifted and Moscow would enjoy economic cooperation with the US in a number of sectors including energy.

While some global commentators consider the proposal “pragmatic”, many feel it is pretty one-sided. Perhaps not surprisingly, Lyudmyla Tautiyeva, a Ukrainian public policy consultant who is based in France and has worked at the OECD and the UN, is in this camp. She tells euradio why.

Lyudmyla Tautiyeva, Public Policy Consultant (in French):
“Ukraine is offered no reliable security guarantees that would deter Putin from invading again. Meanwhile, Russia would obtain the lifting of sanctions and a return to ‘business as usual’ with the United States.”

Ivailo Kalfin is a former MEP and Bulgarian foreign minister and the current director of Eurofound, the EU’s agency for the improvement of living and working conditions. He agrees that Trump’s vision of peace is closer to Moscow’s than to Kyiv’s, as he tells BNR.

Ivailo Kalfin, Former Foreign Minister of Bulgaria (in Bulgarian):
“From the very beginning, from his very inauguration, the US president has been doing the Russian president a lot of favours. What the Americans have proposed is, with a few exceptions, precisely what Russia is after. Of course, with some nuances. The Russian foreign minister says recognition of all the occupied territories, while the Americans say recognition of Crimea, and leaving the others as if in a frozen conflict. But these are details. Ultimately, if this proposal is accepted, this is the Russian vision. Is not about ending the war, but freezing the conflict.”

Indeed, according to this vision, peace is only possible if Ukraine accepts that territories wholly or partially annexed by Russia now belong to Moscow.

At the same time, although Ukraine would be free to pursue EU membership, it would not be permitted to join NATO. This meets a key Russian demand and denies Ukraine the right to choose its own security arrangements.

In a recent interview with Rádio Renascença, Patriarch of Lisbon Rui Manuel Sousa Valério argued that compromise does not necessarily mean defeat. This said, the former bishop of Portugal’s armed forces does not believe that Ukraine should be forced to cede territory in any peace agreement.

Rui Valério, Patriarch of Lisbon (in Portuguese):
“It’s clear to me, because of the background I have and the sensitivities that drive me, that not an inch of Ukrainian land can be ceded to Russia. For me, that’s a given for various reasons. Not only because the autonomous identity and independence of a sovereign nation has been called into question, but also because this would open a Pandora’s box. As such, from now on, any military or political power could feel legitimised or motivated to invade any country it wanted – in the certainty, a priori, that sooner or later it would achieve its aims.”

Tearing up prior agreements

Under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in return for Russia and the US, among others, recognising Ukrainian independence and the inviolability of its existing borders. Ukraine then joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as a non-nuclear state.

The non-proliferation treaty recognises only five countries as legitimate holders of nuclear weapons: China, France, Russia, the UK and the US. All others are banned from developing an arsenal and those that have – namely India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea – have never been parties to the treaty.

Speaking to Žinių Radijas, Lithuania’s foreign minister Kęstutis Budrys says that recognising Crimea as part of Russia would make past agreements not worth the paper they are written on. Other leaders in possession of territorial ambitions and a nuclear arsenal could take such a deal as carte blanche to redraw their own borders.

Kęstutis Budrys, Foreign Minister of Lithuania (in Lithuanian):
“We have agreed to live in peace, to live within these borders, to give up the possibility of having nuclear weapons and to retain the status quo – and to pursue those who seek to acquire them. [But this would] destroy this order. Categorically.”

In a Trumpist world view, in which international institutions and international law are regarded, at best, as superfluous, smaller powers must either submit to their dominant neighbours or suffer the consequences. Yet if non-nuclear nations start feeling insecure and unprotected, there is genuine concern that they could launch their own programmes.

Pointing out the affordability of nuclear weapons, Budrys worries that a peace deal set out along these lines would “open the gates of hell”.

Kęstutis Budrys, Foreign Minister of Lithuania (in Lithuanian):
“Do you know how much the North Korean nuclear programme costs per year? Less than a billion euros. Our defence budget this year is more than three billion. […] By questioning the principles of international law, by questioning the issue of Crimean sovereignty, we are opening the gates of hell from which devils will emerge that no one will be able to put back in.”

What is Europe’s role here?

Given European misgivings, French member station euradio puts another question to Lyudmyla Tautiyeva: could and should Europe be playing a more active role in these negotiations?
Tautiyeva notes that the Europeans have not been sitting on their hands, and that they have actively worked with Kyiv on formulating a counterproposal to Washington’s peace plan. She adds, however, that Europe seems to be struggling to find a place at the negotiating table.

Lyudmyla Tautiyeva, Public Policy Consultant (in French):
“European countries have shown their willingness to deploy a reassurance force in Ukraine, once a ceasefire is in place. This was a very important initiative of the Coalition of the Willing that Emmanuel Macron convened a month ago in Paris. The Europeans have also worked with President Zelensky to draw up a peace plan in response to the American plan. This Euro-Ukrainian plan includes the deployment of a European contingent with US support on Ukrainian soil, the use of frozen Russian assets to finance reconstruction, the provision of security guarantees of the same strength as NATO’s Article 5, without Ukraine joining NATO, and the start of territorial discussions after an unconditional ceasefire. But it is true that, for the time being, Europe has been unable to assert itself and take its place at the negotiating table to end the war in Ukraine, which indeed seems a very distant prospect.”

The problem, says Bulgarian politician Ivailo Kalfin who we also heard from earlier, is that Trump has Zelensky over a barrel.

Ivailo Kalfin, Former Foreign Minister of Bulgaria (in Bulgarian):
“Trump’s entire behaviour right now is like that of a negotiator in the corporate world, one who is trying from a position of strength to pressure his partner and get the most out of him. I see America’s [threatened] withdrawal from the discussions as part of the pressure to conclude the negotiations, because many questions are still unclear: if they withdraw from mediation, does it mean that they are withdrawing altogether and that they are losing interest in what is happening in Ukraine?”

He goes on to spell out the relative weight of the EU and the US on Ukraine’s set of kitchen scales.

Ivailo Kalfin, Former Foreign Minister of Bulgaria (in Bulgarian):
“Ukraine is in a very difficult situation at the moment because American support is really critical for them. As much as the EU is in solidarity and stands behind Ukraine, without American participation it will be very difficult to maintain Ukrainian positions.”

With this in mind, it is interesting to note that, on Wednesday, and without too much fanfare, Washington and Kyiv closed on a much-debated minerals deal. It grants the US access to Ukraine’s natural resources, including its critical minerals, and will help to finance Ukraine’s reconstruction.

The White House has hailed the deal as the “first of its kind”. And it seems that the Ukrainians were right to hold their ground too as they managed to secure a number of concessions, making this a more favourable deal than the one initially on the table. This accord also means that a US withdrawal from supporting Ukraine’s war effort is unlikely, at least in the foreseeable future.
To bring this episode to a close, The Europeans have just aired an extended interview with Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford.

While Garton Ash does not speak specifically about the US-led peace process for Ukraine, he cites the war in Ukraine and worsening transatlantic relations under Trump as two factors behind Europe finding itself, now, at a historical turning point.

Timothy Garton Ash, Historian and Professor of European Studies (in English):
“We’re at the beginning of something new, and I think the three or four biggest dimensions of it are: one, attack from the East. Vladimir Putin. More than three years of the largest war in Europe since 1945. Two, the revelation that there’s a whole world out there which is quite happy to do business with Russia, even while it’s waging a neocolonial war against Ukraine. China, India, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa – all fine going on doing business with Russia. That’s a shock. Third, the attack from within. I mean, the populist pressures in Europe since we last spoke have, you know, grown. Just think about the amazing, shocking success of the AfD in Germany. And then the cruellest blow of all, we’re under attack from the West, from Washington. And if you put together those four things – attack from the East, discovery we’re in a post-Western world, the assault from below, and now the attack from the West – this is clearly a formative moment.”

And at this formative moment, we will sign off.