Just around half a year after he vowed that Europe could achieve independence from Donald Trump’s U.S., German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stressed that Trump should now work on bringing peace to Ukraine, just as he has (hopefully) done in Gaza.
Merz has been coming round to appreciating Trump’s power on the world stage for some time, and has clearly been impressed by the president’s significant role in getting both Israel and Hamas to agree to a deal. Speaking on the outskirts of the Peace Summit in Sharm El Sheikh, Merz expressed “hope”
that the American president, together with us, will now exert the influence he has exerted on the participants in the region on the Russian government. Because we must not forget: just a few hours’ flight away, Russia is waging a war against Ukraine that has been going on for three and a half years.
France’s Emmanuel Macron, however, who really should relish the chance to put such a major job in someone else’s hands given his own political instability, said on Sunday following a call with Volodymyr Zelensky that as the hope of peace arises in the Middle East, Paris will continue offering its support for Ukraine “within the framework of the coalition of the willing.”
This is characteristically tone-deaf, given that leaders outside of the so-called ‘coalition’—which is focussed largely on a fanciful UK-French ‘peacekeeping’ force—practically never mention the group when discussing ending Russia’s war against Ukraine. Instead, they increasingly look to Washington.
Zelensky himself said on Saturday that if Trump could stop one war, “others can be stopped as well.” More recently, on Monday, he wrote online: “The leadership and determination of President Trump have worked [in Gaza], and it is important that all the necessary help has come from countries and many people who have real influence.”
Viktor Orbán’s Hungarian government has long backed Trump to establish peace in Ukraine, even saying on Monday that the “same path” Trump pursued in Gaza “can lead to peace” there as well.
For his own part, Trump said over the weekend that “I want to see the war [in Ukraine] settled” and he is speaking to the leaders involved to see that this is done.
