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Macron came to warn Vladimir Putin that HE “must accept the ceasefire”. Meanwhile, von der Leyen says she is pleased with Ukraine’s receptiveness to the ceasefire, while Scholz also has no doubts in classifying the proposal as part of the process towards a more solid agreement. They all echoed, appropriated, copied, and forwarded Marc Rubio’s statement when he said, “the ball is in Russia’s court.”

Everything would be fine, if it weren’t for the fact that these same leaders previously said the opposite of what they are now repeating. There is no shortage of statements from these same “leaders” saying, just a few months ago, that it was not yet time for peace negotiations, particularly stating that there was no purpose in negotiating with Vladimir Putin, or that only Zelensky could negotiate on behalf of Ukraine.

The fundamental conclusion is that we cannot trust these people in the slightest. If before Trump’s victory the slogan was “peace through strength” and “until the last Ukrainian,” immediately after Trump’s victory, the order was that it had to be Zelensky to negotiate with the Russians. Now, Macron is the first to say that the negotiated ceasefire, not by Zelensky but by the U.S., is effectively to be implemented. The chorus of adult children occupying the top positions in European politics quickly made themselves heard, repeating the cue to exhaustion. If they said the opposite before, they should not have taken it seriously.

It is no wonder, therefore, that these fervent defenders of Euro-Atlanticism and the European Union have themselves, through the twists and turns in their behavior, endangered what they claimed to love so much: NATO and the EU. The political leaders of the EU and the majority of its member states have done very little to defend the “Euro-Atlantic” nature of the Ukrainian project, not demanding that the U.S. assume its responsibilities in the matter.

Thus, it was not merely as passive observers—almost like the rest of us—that they witnessed the entire strategy of the Trump administration to distance the U.S., or at least Trump himself, from the Ukrainian project. They behaved like good students when Trump announced that the U.S. would no longer pour money into Ukraine and that it would be up to the Europeans to assume the responsibilities from now on. Not once did they remember who dragged Europe into this confrontation, nor the alleged importance of the military dependence of the European Union on NATO and its existence. They repeatedly sold us the idea that without the U.S., Europe could not defend itself, hence the NATO bases on European soil.

Thus, taking as true the statements that the European Union needed a “friend” across the Atlantic to defend itself, we could all see that the Europeans showed very little concern for our collective defense. Contradictory? Not at all. After the announcement of the U.S. withdrawal from the Ukrainian project and the meeting in Brussels attended by Peter Hegseth, who demanded that Europe spend more on defense and assume itself as capable of defending itself, as mechanically as disciplined, Von Der Leyen immediately announced a “massive boost” in defense spending.

On the surface, this “massive” increase may fulfill many present and future objectives, but it does not free the EU and the UK from the discursive contradiction they have fallen into: if the Russian threat is current, immediate, and even imminent, then the actions of von der Leyen, António Costa, Kaja Kallas, Macron, or Starmer do not in the least resolve this problem. Nothing that has been announced resolves anything regarding the allegedly “imminent” Russian threat. Not even throwing 150 billion euros into the fire of Ukrainian corruption, as we have all seen that twice that amount did not prevent Kiev’s defeat. Nor the additional 600 billion euros accumulating on top of the more than 400 billion to be spent in 2025 and the more than 600 billion in 2026.

Therefore, either the Russian threat is not as “imminent” or evident as they tried to sell us, or if what they sold us is true—that Europe could not defend itself alone against the Russian Federation, and that, for this reason, NATO was more important than ever—the U.S. withdrawal from the Ukrainian project and the transfer of the necessary effort to compensate for it to the European countries should have provoked, on the part of the European “leaders,” an attitude contrasting with the immediate acceptance of the challenge posed by Peter Hegseth, Trump, Marc Rubio, or JD Vance.

One would expect, from the European leaders, a deeply divergent attitude from the one taken, as they should have demanded that Trump assume his responsibilities as U.S. president, obliging him to honor the commitments established with previous administrations. And they should have done so, not only for reasons of discursive coherence but for reasons related to the protection of the European peoples themselves, at least considering everything they have told us, repeatedly and exhaustively, over time. And the fact is that the European leaders had at their disposal the tools to demand such behavior from Trump.

If the Russian threat is indeed real, above all else, we are witnessing a level of brutal irresponsibility, as the EU leaves the European people unprotected against such a threat. After all, although the EU has been increasing defense spending at a very high rate, the intention to build an entire European military-industrial complex and produce the weapons necessary for a joint defense strategy runs into fundamental and inexorable obstacles: first, the time it takes to set all this up does not align with the discourse of urgency and immediacy that is being sold, both concerning the need to organize the entire necessary apparatus and related to the urgency with which the U.S. wants to abandon the Ukrainian project; in addition to the time that would normally be necessary to build a complex of this nature, strong enough to face one of the two best armies in the world, the EU needs workers, something it has fewer and fewer of, and also energy and raw materials in quantity and at low cost. Something it also does not possess.

Time, and scarcity of resources, associated with their high cost, would lead, if the entire strategy were to materialize, to insufficient output, based on extremely expensive weapons and in low numbers. Which, however, would not fail to constitute a huge military jackpot. All done under immense social pressure, which would be felt if the Russian Federation began annexing EU countries like dominoes. Something that, to believe, requires a lot of faith. But whose pressure would play into the narrative that has taken over the mainstream news media.

In addition to the irresponsibility of not protecting the security interests of the European Union by demanding a different behavior from Trump, they did not spare the European social model, the way of life and the conditions of the people of the European community. I am well aware that the Brussels bureaucracy is not elected, but demanding that the U.S. assume its responsibilities would be the attitude that would show the most coherence concerning the entire repeated discourse.

As I said earlier and contrary to what is thought, the EU would have all the tools at its disposal. First, it should have suggested that the U.S. withdraw or reduce its military bases from the European continent since their maintenance is no longer considered necessary, given that the Trump administration intends to transfer the responsibilities for its defense to Europe; second, if the existence of NATO itself is based on the assumption that Europe cannot defend itself alone, since the objective is to overcome this gap, then we must question what NATO is for; third, the EU should have exerted pressure, wielding the intention not to buy weapons from the U.S., preventing Trump’s U.S. from profiting from the rearmament of the EU, which would be a huge blow to the supposed strategy of recovery of the North American industry.

But, in addition to these demands, which, by themselves, would already be no small thing and would make Trump and his associates rethink the entire strategy, the EU, faced with the contingency of having to face a period during which the European population, supposedly and taking as true the discourse of the European “leaders”—who would never lie, right?—would have to remain unprotected against the Russian threat, what else would be demanded of the representatives of the European Union, if they had the well-being of the European peoples in mind and possessed a backbone? The supposed would be that they would threaten with an approach—even if tactical and temporary—to the Russian Federation, as a way to mitigate such danger and, considering it true, would take the initiative in negotiating a peace agreement in Europe and a new security regime on this continent.

With an attitude of this kind, not only would the European “leaders” demand that Trump come to the table and show his cards—using Trumpist terminology—but they would also force him to reveal to what extent he was, in fact, in favor of peace in Europe, or if, instead, he was only in favor of the possible normalization of U.S./Russian Federation relations, but keeping the EU away from this solution. That is, the U.S. would be forced to reveal that what they want is a kind of two-in-one: normalized relations with the Russian Federation and strained relations between the EU and the Kremlin, ensuring that the purchases of gas, oil, and weapons continue at even higher rates.

If all this were not enough and the U.S. remained intransigent, the EU would play its final card: it would threaten to join the Belt and Road Initiative (New Silk Road) of the People’s Republic of China, promising to deepen relations between the two blocs, thus achieving all the desired objectives: reindustrialization; mitigation of the Russian threat given the connection between the Russian Federation and China; economic recovery; creation of effective conditions for a more sustainable, effective, and efficient joint defense policy. And it would do all this while protecting what should be considered most important in a supposed democracy: the living conditions of the population. Such a move would leave Washington and the Trump administration disconcerted.

But why did the European “leaders” not defend the security model that guaranteed peace in most countries for 80 years and the status quo of the European social model?

If the discourse of the European “leaders” and Trump’s intentions are true, the European Union could never allow such a distancing of the U.S. and the creation of a temporal security vacuum, during which the EU member states would be, allegedly, vulnerable to their main threat. If it is true that Vladimir Putin intends to invade the EU, then, at this stage when the Russian army is rolling over Ukraine and asserting itself as a powerful war machine, what would stop him now from continuing his march to at least the Danube?

If the U.S. distances itself from the defense of Europe, it does so for an obvious reason: the need to face an increasingly powerful and prominent China in all areas. Given the immensity of the task, Trump made a tactical decision to hand over the defense against the Russian Federation to the European Union, not caring, for this, to cause operational disruptions in Ukrainian defense. To be able to direct the U.S. to the Pacific and “defend” Taiwan, Trump is willing to let Ukraine fall, handing the burden to the Europeans.

This situation is extremely difficult for the Europeans because if Trump is in a position to abandon Ukraine without major damage to the U.S., the same is not true for the European Union. After three years of Russophobia, censorship of the Russian press, persecution of Russian citizens, banned elections, and many sanctions, how to suddenly back down? After all, unlike the EU, Trump always said that, with him, there would be no war in Ukraine. An exceptional tactical decision, which now allows the U.S. to leave another trail of destruction behind, without being held minimally accountable and even fattening their coffers with the spoils provided to Blackrock, Monsanto, and others.

The truth is that this position of the EU is, apparently advantageous for the U.S.: 1. It allows the U.S. an elegant exit from the hole they got into, leaving the European Union in their place as the harasser of the Russian Federation; 2. It guarantees the acceleration of the increase in military spending, as Trump had demanded; 3. It keeps the EU with its back turned to the Russian Federation, to the point that even Germany wants to prevent the return of gas via Nord Stream; 4. For now, no European “leader” has questioned NATO, allowing the U.S. to maintain its strategic supremacy on the European continent.

Moreover, since the EU/U.S. strategy now involves freeing up U.S. military forces for the Pacific endeavor, this reality ends up putting the European Union in a very precarious situation. At the same time it needs investment, components, and cheap finished products, at least to maintain a certain level of economic proficiency, such investment and materials can only come from China, a country that is already feeling greater pressure from the U.S., a strategy in which the EU is also a part. It is as if the European Union were harvesting fruits from a tree and, at the same time, cutting its roots, ensuring that, shortly, it will starve to death. What it has been doing, in fact, with the Russian Federation.

Therefore it’s not enough to witness the European discourse constantly change, according to the interlocutor in the White House, as we are witnessing a total incapacity of the supposed politicians we elected to defend what is called the European way of life.

If they so easily give up on their beliefs and objectives, not using the political tools at their disposal, how can we sleep peacefully knowing that we are governed by people without any principles? Will there ever be a time when Europe starts thinking for itself? Or will it be incapable of doing so?