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When he rose to his feet at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, Keir Starmer delivered a stirring tribute to six British soldiers who lost their lives in Afghanistan 13 years ago.
He read out their names very deliberately, one by one. The House was silent. The prime minister then added a tribute to a 22-year-old British Royal Marine, also killed on 6 March, but in 2007 in Helmand province.
They were poignant moments, on what is normally a raucous and crudely partisan occasion in the political week. Across the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Starmer told MPs, 642 individuals had died “fighting for Britain alongside our allies”. Many more had been wounded. “We will never forget their bravery and their sacrifice,” Starmer said.
But the prime minister’s tributes were not just for the families of the lost soldiers. Nor were they just for British ears. They were also intended to be heard loud and clear in the US, inside Donald Trump’s administration, most notably by vice president JD Vance, who the day before had appeared to disrespect British troops by saying that a US stake in Ukraine’s economy was a “better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years”.
Less than a week after Starmer’s tactile “love in” with Donald Trump in the White House, views on how to react to the new US administration had evolved, not just here, but across Europe.
Trump and Vance’s wild, erratic and at times insulting comments about European governments, had left politicians on this side of the Atlantic facing two dawning realities: first, that they had, somehow, to find ways to push back against Trump and Vance without stoking tensions to even more dangerous levels. And second that for the long-term they had to formulate a real plan for a world in which the US would no longer be the cornerstone of western security.
As one European diplomat put it: “It has become clear that Trump is not saying what he is saying just to shake us up, but he is saying it because he means it.”
Amid the turbulence, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in Brussels on Thursday attending an EU summit called to address the security crisis. To the sound of spontaneous clapping, EU leaders rose to their feet to shake his hand, offering backslaps and air kisses. While Zelensky was there Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg gave a brutal justification of his country’s decision to freeze military aid: “The best way I can describe it is sort of like hitting a mule with a two by four across the nose. You get their attention.”
Signs that Europe was undergoing a historic shift could be heard everywhere, from the rhetoric of French President Emmanuel Macron, to the hugely ambitious ideas for collective defence being voiced by the European Commission, to the announcement on Friday by the Polish prime minister Donald Tusk for all men in his country to undergo military training.
But it was in Germany that the change was seismic. After months campaigning in defence of his country’s strict “debt brake”, incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz struck a deal with his likely coalition partners, the SPD, to raise hundreds of billions of euros for defence and infrastructure. Strict rules on debt underpinned post-war Germany’s entire economic structure. But now needs must.
“Given the threat to our freedom and to peace on our continent, the mantra for our defence has to be – whatever it takes,” Merz said.
Macron, who has made the case for Europe’s “strategic autonomy” since coming to office in 2017 could feel a sense of vindication.
“Our wish is to be a power of peace and balance,” he told reporters after the EU’s emergency summit. “To arm ourselves to avoid the war of tomorrow.”
He described the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, as an “imperialist who seeks to rewrite history”.
“Europe is stepping up,” one of Macron’s allies in the European Parliament, Valérie Hayer, who leads the liberal Renew group, told the Observer.
“EU countries must now keep the new pace and fulfil the commitments they have made, namely common defence spending and shared nuclear deterrence,” she added, in reference to Macron’s proposal to discuss extending France’s nuclear umbrella to other European countries.
Germany’s newspapers recognised the enormity of the moment for a country that for so long, after the second world war, shied away from direct military participation.
“At this historic turning point, Germany cannot duck away,” said Marina Kormbaki, writing in Der Spiegel. “The federal government must bring the Europeans together, encourage and guide them to ensure their own security. It must set a good example, must finally shape the Bundeswehr into a powerful army, with investment in material and personnel. Only then will other states follow suit. Only then will Russia’s Vladimir Putin take Europe seriously.”
Later this month the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen will fill in details of her defence funding plan, when she presents a long-awaited white paper.
The EU executive is raiding every cupboard to find money for defence: fiscal rules will be relaxed to allow member states to increase deficits and debt to fund military purchases, a measure that could raise €650bn if every country did the maximum possible.
EU development funds could also be reassigned to defence, if governments chose. Member states will be able to get loans from a €150bn fund, borrowed money secured by unused money in the EU budget.
With pro-Putin Hungary trying to stand in the EU’s way, Brussels is increasingly exploring how it can advance support for Ukraine via “coalitions of the willing” rather than unanimity among members of the bloc.
Any doubts European leaders had about Trump’s intentions towards Ukraine have now been brutally dispelled. Downing St still insists that it is in constant discussion with the Trump administration about the United States offering a permanent security guarantee if a peace deal is signed.
But there are no obvious signs of progress. Twenty four later after suspending aid to the country, US intelligence sharing was curtailed.
Next the Trump administration ordered the US technology company Maxar to stop sharing its satellite images with Ukraine of Russian positions on the battlefield.
These punitive measures left Ukrainians reeling. The alert systems that warned civilians of incoming missiles and the take-off of Russian bomber planes no longer worked effectively. Russia took grim advantage of this new situation by launching a big air strike on Friday against Ukraine’s energy grid and private homes. Trump was indifferent to the carnage that he had enabled. It was “what anybody would do”, he said.
Hours after the US intelligence freeze, the Kremlin launched a major attack on Ukraine’s armed forces in the Kursk region, where Kyiv has for seven months held a small area inside western Russia. North Korean and Russian troops broke through, south of the Ukrainian-held Russian town of Sudhza. An unknown number of Ukrainian soldiers were killed.
About 10,000 Ukrainian troops inside Kursk oblast are at risk of encirclement. Over the next few days – as Ukrainian and US officials meet in Saudi Arabia – Volodymyr Zelenskyy will face a tough decision. He had hoped to use the territory as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Russia. Together with Ukraine’s commander in chief Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi, Zelenskyy can either order a pull-out or hope that a massacre can somehow be avoided. Speaking to the Observer, Ukrainian servicemen said they had little choice but to fight on.
“What Trump says is wrong. It’s nonsense. He doesn’t seem to understand that the orcs (Russian soldiers) come here to kill us,” one said, adding: “The Russians bomb us every night. They murder our women and children. We need weapons so we can fight back. This war is good against evil. We hope Europe and the world will help us.”
Since their acrimonious meeting in the White House, Zelenskyy and his team have tried to fix relations with Trump. Last week Zelenskyy sketched out how a ceasefire might work: a “truce” in the sky, which would see both sides stop drone and missile attacks, and a pause in military operations in the Black Sea. There was no mention of a European peace keeping force or security guarantees – the issue that infuriated Trump, when Zelenskyy raised it in the Oval Office.
Putin, however, seems uninterested in peace. His advisers say Russia is not willing to compromise on any of its demands. They include the takeover of four Ukrainian regions, including areas Russia does not control; Ukraine’s non-Nato “neutrality”; and the removal of Zelenskyy’s government.
All the time suspicion grows that the White House appears to be a partner in Russia’s anti-Zelenskyy campaign as Europe’s leaders desperately seek ways to respond as the certainties of the 80-year-old transatlantic alliance crumble before their eyes.
