CIPHER BRIEF REPORTING - European leaders held emergency talks in Paris on Monday, after the U.S. said Europe would have no place at this week's negotiations with Russia, and a speech by U.S. Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Forum caused confusion and panic over where the U.S. stands on issues that will impact the future of both Ukraine and Europe.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte joined leaders from the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, Denmark and the European Union for emergency talks at the Elysee Palace about the Ukraine war and the future defense of the continent. This, as the U.S. and Russia prepare for talks in Saudi Arabia focused on ending the war in Ukraine, but with no invitations issued to Ukraine or other European nations. Those omissions have called into question whether future security guarantees for either Ukraine or Europe are a priority for the Trump Administration.
By the time the 2025 Munich Security Conference wrapped up on Sunday, top U.S. officials had already said publicly that NATO membership was off the table for Ukraine, and that it was “unrealistic” for Kyiv to expect a return of any of its territory (one-fifth of the country) that was forcibly taken by Russia. And Vice President Vance criticized European nations for not being more open to the views of extreme nationalist parties, in a speech that took many by surprise.
While Trump’s disdain for NATO and his relatively warm relations with Russia were already well-known, after his first term and comments made during the 2024 campaign, the speed with which he has reached out to Moscow has left many European leaders dumbfounded.
In an exclusive interview, retired four-star General David Petraeus, told The Cipher Brief that the atmosphere in Munich was one of high “diplomatic drama,” unlike any he had seen in a dozen previous trips to the annual gathering.
THE CONTEXT
- On Feb. 12 Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Ukraine would not be invited to join NATO and that it was "unrealistic" to expect that Ukraine would regain the territory Russia has captured in the three years of its full-scale war.
- Also on Feb. 12, President Trump spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin in a 90-minute call that Kremlin and White House officials described in glowing terms. Leaders in Kyiv, Brussels and other European capitals said they had been given no notice of the call and expressed concern that Trump may be offering concessions to Russia before formal talks begin.
- In a speech to the Munich Security Conference on Friday, Vice President JD Vance was sharply critical of European nations for restrictions on far right-wing parties, suggesting that "firewalls" against free speech had limited the democratic process. The speech prompted angry responses from across the continent, especially from Germany, where forms of hate speech have been outlawed because of the country's Nazi history. “A commitment to ‘never again’ is not reconcilable with support for the AfD,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said, referring to the German far-right party. “Where our democracy goes from here is for us to decide.”
- Trump administration officials confirmed that a senior-level U.S. delegation will hold talks with Russian officials on the Ukraine war in Saudi Arabia Tuesday, with neither Ukrainian nor other European officials present. This, too, has drawn concern and rebukes from across Europe. Trump said that Ukraine would ultimately have a role in the peace talks, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that “if it’s real negotiations…Ukraine will have to be involved because they were invaded."
- In Brussels Monday, Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, said that Europe would have no place at the negotiating table. “All their concerns will be known, and addressed as well,” Kellogg told reporters in Brussels, where he briefed NATO members. “I don’t think it’s reasonable and feasible to have everybody sitting at the table. We know how that can turn out and that has been our point, is keeping it clean and fast as we can.
- Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said Monday that Kyiv will not be involved in the Riyadh talks and that “Ukraine did not know they were planned.”
THE INTERVIEWS
We spoke to several conference guests in a series of video “Dispatches from Munich,” published on The Cipher Brief's YouTube Channel, for their take on the drama and more importantly, the signal it sent to both Ukraine and Europe. The guests we spoke with included the CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and longtime campaigner against human rights abuses in Russia, Bill Browder; McCain Institute Executive Director Evelyn Farkas; former NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers (Ret.); and New York Times White House Correspondent David Sanger. Comments have been lightly edited for length and clarity. You can find the full interviews on The Cipher Brief's YouTube channel.
Browder: [Vice President Vance’s] speech was quite dramatic in the sense that here you had the U.S. Vice President not criticizing Russia, Iran, or China, but criticizing the UK, Germany, and Romania, and alluding to these countries being 'Soviet'. I think everybody who was here was either angry or scratching their heads in bewilderment, because this is the first time that there's been such a degrading and insulting speech coming out of a senior position in the United States towards Europe.
In the Kremlin, they're dancing the jig right now, because this speech could have been written in Moscow. On the other hand, if JD Vance wanted to do the Europeans a favor by insulting them in such a humiliating way, it got everybody all together on one page and putting aside a lot of their differences, to understand that Europe probably needs to be more decisive and act on their own at this point.
The main thing that everybody was talking about here is what's going to happen with Ukraine. Trump came up with this unacceptable approach towards peace, which is to sit down with Putin without the Ukrainians and without the Europeans. That's not going to achieve peace, because you can't have a peace negotiation if only one of the two warring parties are present in the negotiation. But it also has been a wake-up call [for Ukraine]. If the U.S. is going to cut off military aid for Ukraine to try to force a surrender, then Ukraine is going to have to figure out how to survive without U.S. money. And one of the big themes I've been talking about here at the Munich Security Conference is the frozen Russian assets. There's currently $300 billion of frozen Russian assets, most of which are held in the European Union. And that could easily be a solution to the problem. There's no need for America to continue funding Ukraine, because Putin can fund Ukraine, and he can do so through the assets that hopefully the Europeans will confiscate from Russia.
Going forward, the main thing we're going to be looking at is how the Trump administration ultimately decides to treat Ukraine, whether military aid continues or it stops. What kind of sanctions are lifted on Russia in some kind of proposed peace treaty? And then more broadly, I guess we want to see, with this nastiness that we saw with JD Vance, is whether there's an attempt to patch things up.
Farkas: Last year, there was a lot of disappointment and upset with [the U.S.] because we had slowed our assistance to Ukraine through the U.S. Congress. The members of Congress were under a lot of pressure from the Europeans. This year, it's different. It's a situation where the Europeans are actually looking at the United States, not with disappointment, but with anger, and with a real question mark about whether we are still going to be their allies in the future, which is something I don't think I've ever really experienced as seriously as we're feeling it today.
It's a real difference in tone, and there's also another element, which is fear – fear among the Europeans that they will be left alone to essentially fight against Russia. The Europeans are feeling they're being criticized by the U.S. government, rather than hearing the U.S. government criticize Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, all of the autocrats. So it's a very odd situation to be in. Also, the American government is speaking a lot about internal European affairs, internal German affairs, which obviously the Europeans don't take too kindly to.
And at the moment, the real existential threat is Russia. Ukraine is standing and fighting, but the Europeans now understand that they might be fighting Russia soon. So it's much sharper right now in terms of understanding the threat, and frankly understanding that Europe might not be able to count on the United States in the near or medium term. There's a real challenge to Europe to stand up for its values, and there's a real question mark about what America's values are right now. Like it or not, our economic, political, and military future is with Europe. And if we don't stand up to Russia, China will take this opportunity and will exercise influence in the Asia Pacific, where we have a lot of interest as well.
There's a concern among the Europeans that somehow America might make decisions with Russia and with other great powers, above their heads. There is also, of course, a fear that somehow Europe will be negatively impacted because America will either officially withdraw from NATO or just unofficially withdraw, remove our troops from Europe and therefore take a back seat. So there is this fear that somehow America will abandon Europe or – even worse – that America might decide the fate of Europe over the heads of the Europeans.
Adm. Rogers: There is clearly lots of angst around this idea of what is the future in Ukraine, what is the role of Europe, what is the U.S. strategy, are they linked, how is Ukraine itself going to be involved in all this, what's the Russians dimension to all this, just a lot of uncertainty. And quite frankly, a lot of angst and agitation among the Europeans at the moment.
The audience [for Vice President Vance’s speech] thought they were going to hear an American leader lay out a vision for Ukraine going forward, as well as trying to talk about the broader dynamics of the U.S.-European relationship. And that's not what they heard. Instead, what they got was a U.S. view of domestic issues in Europe, which left a lot of Europeans here scratching their head. A lot of Europeans found that both frustrating and unsettling.
I think Europe is stepping back and asking itself: Does this represent some sort of fundamental change, and do the Americans have a different view of their relationship with us? Or is this something that's specific issue-focused?
Because remember, it's not just Ukraine. Ukraine has been the focus here at the Munich Security Conference, but we've also got significant issues around tariffs, trade, and economic dimensions. And I think many Europeans in general are asking themselves, does this mean that we're going to have to create a different relationship with the Americans? If so, what would that relationship look like? What is our strategy? There's a strong consensus that they're very agitated, unhappy and uncertain, but I don't think there's a consensus yet about, what should we do about it? I think that is where the focus of the moment is.
My takeaway was that [the Europeans] are trying to understand exactly what is the U.S. strategy is and how it's going to play out. What is the nature of this administration's views of the dynamics with Russia, also some questions about whether you agree that this initial outreach is the most effective strategy in terms of negotiating an outcome with the Russians? So we're in a period of great agitation or churn in the sense that Europeans don't like some of the things they're hearing. I think they're trying to understand what they're seeing. This seems to be different – we want to understand how different. We want to understand, does this extend beyond just Ukraine? Is this something more foundational, something broader? And is there an economic dimension to it, in addition to the traditional national security and geopolitical kinds of things?
Sanger: The [U.S.-Europe] collision has happened, as predicted. We saw it coming, and I think it remains to be seen whether or not we've got severe casualties here.
The defense secretary announced that when the negotiations take place with Russia, it's clear that Ukraine will not get into NATO anytime in our lifetimes and that they are going to lose territory, probably everything that the Russians have already grabbed. So that seemed to the Europeans and the Ukrainians to be essentially giving Putin two of the things he wanted most, before they even ever step into the negotiations.
[Secretary Hegseth] was contradicted immediately by Vice President Vance, which suggested they didn't have their positions together. There's a reason it suggested that; they don't. The administration hasn't really made a lot of decisions, but they got out and spoke to the Europeans anyway. And then they made it clear that the Europeans would not be at the negotiating table, and that the Ukrainians may or may not be.
So all of the sounds of unity that you heard in this room for the past three years since the invasion, they all crumbled away this week. It's been such a mess that Prime Minister Macron called a meeting of European leaders – not the United States – to figure out how to respond. President Zelensky, addressing this group, said that it was time for an “army of Europe” to be formed. Well, what is an army of Europe? That means NATO without the United States.
The whole post-World War II order was based on the thought that we're going to go past an era of power politics that we saw in the 1800s and early part of the 1900s, that we're going to set up a set of international norms and laws, and the countries will respect each other's boundaries and operate and settle their differences within that set of laws. That is not what the Trump administration has in mind. It's certainly never been what Vladimir Putin had in mind.
[For Trump], speed can be enormously helpful in something like this because he wants to get the war over, and there's something to be said for speed. But as we all know, speed can kill as well if you are not careful. And that's the concern the Europeans have, that what you'll end up with is a speedy agreement that leaves the Russians in a position where they could reignite the war after they rebuild, after they put their forces back together, after they recover from the huge casualties that they've suffered in Ukraine, and that there will be no real security agreement to keep Ukraine together the second time.
Europe is at its most powerful when it is united. It's at its least powerful when it's split apart. Trump would be perfectly happy to keep it on its back heels here. And he's not from that group, which Joe Biden came from, John Kennedy came from, actually most recent modern presidents have come from, which have viewed our alliances as a strength and a way to extend American power. He views them as an expensive impediment.
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief
