Ukrainian fears grow as Trump threatens and humiliates Europe

 

This week, as the war in Ukraine took a dramatic turn, we welcomed Sasha Dovzhyk to the Guardian offices. Sasha is director of Index, a new institution in Lviv devoted to the documentation of the war. Sasha spoke movingly about Ukrainians’ hopes and fears after three years of war – including the situation for those living under the terror of occupation, with daily threats to life and safety from the Russian authorities.

She was in London for the launch of a book she helped bring together after its author, the brilliant Ukrainian novelist Victoria Amelina, was killed in a Russian missile attack before she was able to complete the manuscript. Margaret Atwood introduced our extract from this important book, and Charlotte Higgins’s review is in today’s magazine.

Also this week, Shaun Walker had an exclusive interview with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv. In it, the Ukrainian president made it clear that Europe would not have the means to guarantee his nation’s security if the US were to withdraw defence support.

Not long after we published Zelenskyy’s words, new US defence secretary Pete Hegseth was in Brussels telling his European counterparts they would have to take the lead in defending Ukraine and that the US would no longer prioritise Europe’s safety. That was just the entree for an even bigger shift: Donald Trump announcing he’d agreed to begin negotiations with Vladimir Putin to broker a ceasefire.

It was another seismic geopolitical moment in the nascent days of the second Trump era. And it was “precisely what Putin had been waiting for”, according to the experts and insiders our Russian affairs correspondent Pjotr Sauer spoke to.

Global affairs correspondent Andrew Roth wrote that Trump “does not care who controls the blood-soaked soils of east Ukraine, so long as he can access the rare earth minerals that lie beneath” while Patrick Wintour gauged the scale of Europe’s diplomatic humiliation as the Munich security conference began.

Shaun Walker and Artem Mazhulin spoke to those on the ground in Kyiv, where reaction ranged from feelings of betrayal to grim relief the war may at least be ending.

Columnist and Europe expert Timothy Garton Ash was left flabbergasted by the dire consequences of Trump’s decision, writing that his “appeasement of Vladimir Putin makes Neville Chamberlain look like a principled, courageous realist”.

We’re entering a critical new stage for Ukraine, Europe and the Middle East as the world reorientates to Trump’s second presidency. Our live blogs remain essential in keeping up with the latest developments, while our correspondents and experts are committed to explaining how these overlapping stories are shaping the world for our readers and revealing their human impact on the ground.

-Owen Gibson, The Guardian