Pablo Hiriart
Madrid.- As if concrete evidence were needed that the struggle between right and left has taken a back seat, there is President Donald Trump with his rude demand that Ukraine, a democratic country of the West, capitulate to the Russian invader.
The antagonistic protagonists on the political and cultural (and even military, in this case) battlefield are liberal democracy and authoritarian populism.
Therein lies the crux of the matter. This is the case in Europe, as well as in the United States and Mexico, to cite emblematic examples.
The splendid meeting of European and Canadian democratic leaders on Sunday in London made it clear that the US government has changed sides in this struggle, although it is essential to conceal it. Ukraine can resist for a time—we don’t know how long—without the United States, but it cannot do so against the United States.
The same goes for Europe. Its leaders stoically endure the threats of tariffs on their exports and the accusation of the US government that points to Europeans and not to Russia as the enemies of the Old Continent while destabilizing liberal democracies with the support of anti-European Union nationalist parties.
One slap in the face after another. Yesterday’s slap was revealed by The New York Times: the Trump administration’s Secretary of Defense ordered the US Cyber Command to halt all its intelligence operations against Russia, thereby giving up on understanding Putin’s true intentions in the negotiations over Ukraine.
As the NYT explained: “The sabotage attempts in Europe, including alleged Russian attempts to cut communications cables, mysterious explosions, and assassination plots led by Russia, including that of the CEO of Germany’s largest arms manufacturer, in the last year. Until now, the United States has been instrumental in helping European nations fight back, often in covert cyber operations, but that cooperation could now be in jeopardy.
On Sunday, the Kremlin spokesman said, “The new US administration is rapidly changing the configuration of its entire foreign policy. This coincides largely with our vision”.
It was not the Russian government that changed sides, but the US government. The alignment of both presidents was made concrete when the United States and Russia at the UN voted against condemning the invasion of Ukraine.
The democratic leaders of Europe, with Zelenski present at the meeting, drafted a four-point peace plan to present to Trump. The plan includes his agreements with Putin but makes a fundamental point: European troops will guarantee that Russia complies with the agreement once peace is signed.
“Boots on the ground and planes over Ukraine,” specified British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, giving Trump a win by keeping the ‘rare earth’ minerals and Russia extending its border at the expense of already conquered Ukrainian territory. But – and it’s a big but – Europe is once again playing a central role in the solution, and the Ukrainians will have a guarantee that there will not be a third Russian invasion of their country.
With this, Europe’s democratic leaders avoided repeating the mistake of the Munich Pact in 1938, when they accepted Hitler’s appropriation of part of Czechoslovakia (the Sudetenland) without allied military forces to guarantee an end to Nazi expansionism.
The pact proposed by the Europeans is exceptionally kind to Trump and Putin. However, it is realistic and allows time to be bought.
The offer presented on Sunday, or its essential points on which to build the agreement, will take time. As President Trump told Zelenski at the White House on Friday, it is not a case of “sign now or you and your country die. “
Such a hasty peace suited Russia, which needed a break after its disastrous battlefield performance and needed to reorganize. When the world’s second military power is not winning after long years of war, it means it is losing (remember Vietnam and Afghanistan).
The Russian economy, reports Alberto Rojas, El Mundo‘s correspondent in Ukraine, is running out of steam at the same time as its old Cold War arsenals. “The Russian National Welfare Fund (that’s really what it’s called), the source from which Putin draws his money to finance the war, has fallen from some 8.8 trillion rubles when the invasion began to 3.8 trillion in 2024”.
Marie Mendras, professor of Political Science in Paris, published in Le Monde that “Russia is exhausted.” Its soldiers are untrained; there is tension in the high military command, orders, and counter-orders. Its army was defeated outside Kyiv. Its fleet was defeated in the western Black Sea (which allowed Ukraine to reactivate its economy with grain exports along that route).
Pensions are increasing below inflation. Medicines are scarce, and bringing supplies to the distant battlefield is increasingly difficult. The economy’s 3 percent growth is due to the arms industry, at the expense of other sectors, which increases poverty. There is material insecurity.
She points out that the elites’ dissatisfaction is demonstrated by the fact that one million upper-middle-class Russians have left the country in the last three years. In all of 2024, Russia only advanced 0.6 percent of Ukrainian territory. A thousand leaders of that country have their fortunes frozen abroad.
That is why Putin urgently needs a ceasefire on the terms he agreed with Trump. He needs time to breathe. A peace without compromise and “in a couple of years to attack again”, as Lech Walesa told the correspondent of El Financiero in his offices in the historic shipyards of Gdansk.
Europe also needs time to rearm and articulate a defense without the United States. And to overcome the political obstacles they will face within their countries: alliances of the far right and far left can slow down budgetary initiatives to that end in the German Bundestag, for example.
If the Spanish head of government, Pedro Sánchez keeps his promises regarding rearmament, he will be left without a government because his far-left allies are pro-Russian, and the far-right Vox party dances to whatever tune Donald Trump plays. And they do it to the sound of a balalaika.
Time. Time and weapons for Ukraine to negotiate from a position of strength. Time for France, Great Britain, and other countries volunteering in the agreement so that their troops could prepare to go to Ukraine to prevent what Hitler did in Czechoslovakia from happening again.
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