As America intervenes, the fate of Ukraine – and the rest of Europe – hangs in the balance

We are witnessing in real time the magnitude of the changes radiating out of the United States, writes Mary Dejevsky – and the aftershocks will be felt across Europe

Any hopes Ukraine may have harboured about the Trump White House taking a more sympathetic stance on its cause than foreshadowed during the election campaign have been comprehensively dashed.

Donald Trump has confirmed that he spoke with Vladimir Putin about starting negotiations immediately to end the war in Ukraine, on Wednesday – with Trump adding that the pair agreed to “work together, very closely”. The US president also spoke to President Zelensky about his conversation with Putin.

The intervention followed earlier, unsparing comments after meetings in Brussels – in which Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said that Nato membership for Ukraine was “unrealistic” and that Ukraine needed to give up all hopes of restoring its pre-2014 borders and prepare to negotiate a settlement with Russia, to be policed by an international force.

Hegseth was speaking two days before the opening this weekend of the annual Munich Security Conference that was already shaping up to be the most consequential international assembly of its kind for many years – because of who will be there, because of the timing, and because of what could, potentially, be decided.

Those attending, as well as the US defence secretary, will include the US vice-president JD Vance, a constellation of European political and North American leaders, the heads of Nato and the EU, as well as phalanxes of defence and military officials. The defence secretary, John Healey, will be representing the UK, and speaking. Volodymyr Zelensky will also be there. But it is the timing, at a confluence of so many political shifts, that makes this gathering so unusual – if not unique.

It may be only week four of Donald Trump’s second presidency, but his flurries of executive orders, diplomatic meetings and impromptu press conferences have already caused immense upheaval, what with tariffs and the threat of tariffs, and even apparent territorial designs on other people’s countries.

The conference also comes at what is widely seen as a decisive point in the Russia-Ukraine war; just one week before a federal election in Germany that could bring the far right closer to power than at any time since the Second World War, and the first official sortie by any UK prime minister to Brussels since Brexit, in an attempt to broach a “reset” with the EU, in which the UK sees defence as key.

So much will be in play this weekend – a lot more, of course, behind closed doors than in public – that it is hard to know which areas of discussion will have the greatest consequences, and anyway these may not become known for a while. But two – and a half – areas would seem to be indicative.

First, Ukraine. As well as the US vice-president, who repeatedly called for an end to the war during the US election campaign and regards Ukraine as a regional, rather than a US or global problem, the conference will also host retired General Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia. He says he will be trying to gauge where European countries stand on Ukraine, but will not present a peace plan. He is, though, expected to travel on to Kyiv, and thence maybe to Moscow.

The US and UK defence secretaries, Pete Hegseth (left) and John Healey, have opposite views on whether Ukraine will ever join Nato (Johanna Geron, Pool Photo via AP)

What does seem clear is that Munich will clarify the new US administration’s intention of making the Ukraine war a primarily European responsibility. This week, John Healey became the first non-American to chair a meeting of the Ramstein group of countries supplying military support to Ukraine.

Zelensky has been staking out his position in a series of interviews, including with the Guardian newspaper, where he insisted that any security guarantees given to Ukraine by the Europeans would be worth little without the US. He has also been talking to the US about preferential access to Ukrainian mineral wealth. It is clearly not only Trump who is adept at the transactional game.

Two critical points may become clearer at Munich. One is how far the US is prepared to continue supporting Ukraine as a combatant; another is not just whether the Europeans could support Ukraine alone (they can’t), but how united they are – which is not as united as they need to be, including on whether Ukraine can, or will ever, join Nato.

The division was graphically shown up this week, when Germany’s main contenders for Chancellor, Olaf Scholz and the CDU leader, Friedrich Merz, agreed in their first election debate that there would be no Nato membership for Ukraine because the US was opposed. The very next day, the UK defence secretary, answering questions in the House of Commons, said that Ukraine was on course for eventual membership.

It is just about possible to square that circle by pushing a timetable into the very distant future, but not easily. Pete Hegseth, the new US defence secretary, reiterated that there was no hope of Ukraine joining Nato and that a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders with Russia was an “unrealistic objective”. And with no Nato membership for Ukraine, a key condition for Moscow – de facto or de jure, as it might say – there is little prospect of an end to the war unless this is spelled out.

That there could be some movement from Russia, albeit on other aspects, however, emerged from an unannounced trip to Moscow by Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East. Witkoff, who will also be at Munich, returned to the US with an American former diplomat, Marc Fogel, who had been imprisoned in Russia on a drugs offence. Greeting Fogel at the White House, Trump did not divulge what deal might have been struck, but said there would be at least one other US prisoner released and drew a connection with Ukraine, noting that the release was a “show of good faith” by the Russians and “could be a big important part” of ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The second major area to feature at Munich will be the intersection of security and the global economy, with potentially huge shifts in the dynamics if Trump proceeds to impose the tariffs he has threatened, not just north and south of the United States, but around the world. In Trump’s first term, European members of Nato fended off threats from the US to loosen or even cut off defence support by dint of promises to up their financial contribution.

They are now better prepared for such an eventuality, but not for the five per cent of GDP contribution now mentioned by Trump, nor are they much further forward, except in intent, with coordinating their defence production. What is more, something that could look like a simplification, with more EU members now in Nato, could also become a complication, if Trump – as it would appear – has the EU in his tariff sights.

The half-issue in Munich is the Middle East. Time was when Europeans, whether the EU as a bloc, or individual countries, such as Norway, then outside the EU, were involved in regional peace-brokering. Preoccupied perhaps by Ukraine, that is not evident now. The second day of the Munich Security Conference is also the day when the latest hostage and prisoner exchange is due between Hamas and Israel. Always fragile, the agreement now appears close to collapse, with Trump intervening to demand the immediate release of all Israeli hostages – or else. The Europeans – by necessity or design – are sidelined. This is reverting to an issue between the US and its allies in the Middle East; insofar as it will feature at Munich, it will be as a looming shadow, largely beyond the participants’ remit.

For the ever-shrinking number of Britons and Germans with a living or inherited memory of the late 1930s, Munich has particular connotations, which include Chamberlain’s vain quest for peace and some of the most extravagant Nazi parades. It is now widely lauded as one of Germany’s most liveable and greenest cities, and for many in the contemporary security and diplomatic world, it hosts the doyenne of security conferences.

This is where, in 2007, Vladimir Putin lambasted Nato for its eastward advance, and – as seen by many in the West – declared the new Cold War. It is also where, in 2022, Zelensky was among those who listened calmly to those sounding loud alarms about an imminent Russian assault, just four days before it actually happened.

This weekend’s gathering will serve to demonstrate how much the world has changed since then. But it could also come to be seen as a turning point of its own, illustrating the magnitude of the changes that are starting to radiate out of the United States, but whose significance is far from being fully understood elsewhere.