In his speech following the emergency European summit he called in London on Sunday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Britain was prepared to send “boots on the ground” and “planes in the air” to defend Ukraine against the evil madman, Vladimir Putin.
Then Starmer added: but only if the United States joins us.
He said: “We will go further to develop a ‘coalition of the willing’ to defend a deal in Ukraine…And to guarantee the peace. Not every nation will feel able to contribute. But that can’t mean we sit back. Instead, those willing will intensify planning now – with real urgency. The UK is prepared to back this…With boots on the ground, and planes in the air…Together with others. Europe must do the heavy lifting…But to support peace on our continent. And to succeed, this effort must have strong US backing. We’re working with the US on this point, after my meeting with President Trump last week.”
Donald Trump has made it clear he is not going to commit U.S. troops to Ukraine, however. And Russia has said it would never accept Western troops there.
What Starmer is really saying is: Europe stands ready to fight and die as peacekeepers to save Ukraine if necessary, but only with the Americans. So when they refuse to come and the disastrous Project Ukraine at last comes crashing on our heads, don’t blame us, blame the U.S.A.
Trump will become even easier to blame now that he has cut off military aid and intelligence to Ukraine.
Two men sharing a laugh on their way out of power: Volodmyr Zelensky and Justin Trudeau at the European Leaders Summit, March 2, 2025 at Lancaster House. Picture (Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street)
The theater piece directed by Starmer at Lancaster House with an assembly of 15 European heads of government (and Justin Trudeau of Canada) was not really choreographed to try to convince Trump to reverse course, which appears unlikely, but as an elaborate presentation to save the hides of politicians who invested so much of their own political capital and wasted so much of their citizens’ money in the inevitable and humiliating defeat of Ukraine.
The summit was called by Starmer within two days of what he and the other Europeans saw transpire in the Oval Office on Friday. [See: Trump, Vance School Zelinsky on Reality of His War]. That occured at the end of a week in which both Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron had paid a visit to the same Oval Office where they learned first hand Trump’s determination to end the war even if it means Ukraine’s defeat.
That Ukraine would lose was obvious two years ago to Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz when they both gently broke that news to Zelensky privately in Paris in February 2023.
The private remarks clashed with public statements from European leaders who had routinely said then, and still say today, that they will continue to support Ukraine for as long as it takes to achieve victory on the battlefield. That was Joe Biden’s line too.
The Wall Street Journal, which reported on the private remarks to Zelenksy two years ago, wrote: “The public rhetoric masks deepening private doubts among politicians in the U.K., France and Germany that Ukraine will be able to expel the Russians from eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014, and a belief that the West can only help sustain the war effort for so long, especially if the conflict settles into a stalemate, officials from the three countries say. ‘We keep repeating that Russia mustn’t win, but what does that mean? If the war goes on for long enough with this intensity, Ukraine’s losses will become unbearable,’ a senior French official said. ‘And no one believes they will be able to retrieve Crimea.'”
Indeed Ukraine’s losses have become unbearable. Macron and Scholz tried to tell Zelensky at that Élysée Palace dinner in February 2023 that he must consider peace talks with Moscow, the Journal reported.
Zelensky, Starmer and Macron at Lancaster House March 2, 2025. (Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street)
According to its source, the newspaper quoted Macron as telling Zelensky that “even mortal enemies like France and Germany had to make peace after World War II.”
Macron told Zelensky “he had been a great war leader, but that he would eventually have to shift into political statesmanship and make difficult decisions,” the newspaper reported.
One wonders then why Scholz and Macron and the rest of Europe have persisted in fueling a lost cause that has since chewed up tens of thousands of additional Ukrainian lives. Could they be so corrupt that the survival of their political careers was worth the carnage of another nation’s men?
Could they have been as corrupted as Antony Blinken, who insisted to the end of his time as U.S. secretary of state that Ukraine lower the conscription age to 18, even though he knew these youth would be sent to certain death? Have Western leaders not understood that the only chance Ukraine had to win the war was with NATO’S direct participation, risking a nuclear holocaust ?
It seems that U.S. and European leaders kept an unwinnable war going until now to save their own careers. They could never admit defeat. But it did not save Biden or Harris or Blinken or Scholz or Trudeau, and Macron is in trouble too as voters saw through them all.
They’d all staked too much on the outcome of the war. They allowed their economies to fall. They pushed government censorship of social and alternative media to hide criticism that they were allowing men to die so that they would not be accused of “losing Ukraine.”
It’s been a cornerstone of history from ancient emperors to Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon in Vietnam, and now Biden and Starmer in Ukraine: Let them die so that we may stay in office.
With defeat staring them in the face, who better to blame it on than the ogre, Donald Trump, who has dared to inject realism into the twisted dream of using Ukraine to weaken and defeat Russia.
It’s a failed policy that the European and Ukrainian leaders desperately need to keep going. One way to attempt this, as Chicago University professor John Mearsheimer said, is for the British, French and Ukrainians to “trap” the United States into giving a “security guarantee” to Ukraine.
Language in the mineral deal Zelensky had gone to the U.S. on Friday to sign calls for “common protection of critical resources.” Mearsheimer told a TV network in India that that is “the way they are trying to trap Trump and Co., and Trump won’t be trapped.”
This became evident in the Oval Office dust up last Friday when Trump angrily rejected Zelensky’s insistence on a U.S. “security guarantee” before he’d agree to a ceasefire and sign the mineral agreement.
The only way to keep their war going is to cajole Trump into getting the U.S. deeper into the morass, rather than wisely pulling out and pushing for a deal to end it.
As much as they might despise Trump, Starmer’s Sunday performance was designed to suck up to him. And an ungrateful Zelensky, reconsidering his public feud with Trump, is trying to make up with a man that seems susceptible to flattery.
Donald Trump addressing a joint session of Congress on March 4, 2024. (President Donald Trump/Wikimedia Commons)
In his address to the U.S. Congress Tuesday night, Trump said: “Earlier today I received an important letter from President Zelensky of Ukraine. The letter reads: ‘Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer.’ ‘Nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainians,’ he said. ‘My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump strong leadership to get a peace that lasts. … We do really value how much America has done to help Ukraine, maintain its sovereignty and independence. … Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it at any time.’ That is convenient for you. I appreciate that he sent this letter. I just got it a little while ago. Simultaneously we’ve had serious discussions with Russia. Then I’ve received strong signals that they are ready for peace. Wouldn’t that be beautiful? Wouldn’t that be beautiful? Wouldn’t that be beautiful? It’s time to stop this madness. It’s time to halt the killing. It’s time to end the senseless war. If you want to end wars, you have to talk to both sides.”
Desperate Europeans and Ukrainians need Trump to keep their war and thus their careers going, perhaps none more so than Zelensky.
Will Trump stand firm, or will he succumb to a trap?
Main photo: Starmer and Zelensky at Lancaster House European Summit on Sunday, March 2, 2025. (Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street/Wikimedia Commons)
Source: Consortium News.
