by Ian Proud, Strategic Culture:
President Zelensky now attends every major European meeting of Heads. While perhaps understandable, that means the agenda gets hijacked by Ukrainian demands and limits Europe’s ability to play an impartial role in peace talks.
European leaders met again in Paris on 27 March to discuss ideas for a coalition of the willing, specifically, a group of European nations that would be willing to provide security guarantees to Ukraine as part of a future peace process.
That meeting produced no new breakthroughs and the co-hosts, President Macron of France and Prime Minister Starmer of Britain, held separate press conferences at the end. Yet again, it wasn’t possible to reach a consensus on the controversial topic of using frozen Russian assets for reconstruction in Ukraine, given the significant legal and financial risks around this.
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No new determination was reached on the controversial notion of deploying western ‘reassurance’ troops to Ukraine in the future. Some European countries including Greece and Italy have made it clear that they see this as an unworkable and dangerous step. Unworkable, because the deployment of, essentially, NATO troops to Ukraine, will almost certainly face resistance from Russia. Dangerous because, even the most optimistic western commentators are talking about a deployed European force of 30,000 troops, which is tiny when set against the 600,000 Russian troops thought to be in Ukraine right now.
But there is a deeper problem as well. Proposals to deploy troops to Ukraine, however unworkable and dangerous, are addressing the wrong question. The United States and, indirectly, the NATO Secretary General, have admitted that Ukraine’s desire to join the military alliance is now off of the table. The Paris summit would have better focussed on the detail of what security guarantees for Ukraine might look like as part of any peace deal. This might be along the lines of an Article 5 type of commitment by willing European states, as recommended by the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni.
Leaders like Macron and Starmer also can’t claim the threat of a military force is merely a tactic to put pressure on Russia to strike for peace, given the proposed force’s limited size and the reality that it would take months, at the current rate of progress, for troops to arrive in Ukraine, if they ever did.
Yet again, this talks to Europe’s inability to fight wars by committee. Big meetings in Paris give European leaders their moment to say the right things, express solidarity and offer every type of support short of assistance. But, and fundamentally, events like the Paris Summit offer no new ideas and inject no new energy or momentum into efforts to bring peace to Ukraine.
In fact, in terms of the substance, these events have become a distraction from and a delaying tactic to, real peace.
A contributing factor, it seems to me, is the inability of Europe’s leaders to hold a meeting without inviting President Zelensky of Ukraine. He appears, in his cargo pants and black sweatshirt, to be treated like royalty. And, of course, it may be understandable that people feel a sense of solidarity with Ukraine at a time of war and feel a personal affinity to Zelensky.
But the question remains, what role does Zelensky play at these talks?
Clearly, he arrives with his own ‘asks’ and a package of narratives to deploy during his many press engagements in Europe. These include the need to impose more sanctions on Russia, that Europe should force Putin to make peace, that only strengthening Ukraine with more weapons will help. You’ve probably heard these lines countless times before because they are aggressively deployed by every Ukrainian official and media outlet.
As Ukraine is fighting Russia on the battlefield, I understand their need to pursue an aggressive public communications posture as part of their wider war effort, including to prop up morale at home. In Zelensky’s shoes, I might pursue a similar tactic. And yet, the lines he advances, on sanctions and applying pressure on Russia all appear, most likely, to extend the war, not end it.
And because Zelensky attends every major European meeting now on the war effort, his narratives dominate the agenda of the day, whether or not the host agrees.
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