In the face of US President Donald Trump’s attacks on his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, the SPD’s foreign policy expert Michael Roth is calling on the EU to immediately deploy a military support package for Ukraine and to negotiate with Trump over security guarantees.
The EU can only gain a position of strength, “if it now puts everything on the scales that it has”, said the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag to the “Tagesspiegel” (Thursday edition). This includes a collective commitment to “significantly and transparently increase defense spending” and an “immediate military support package for Ukraine”. Moreover, “immediate negotiations with Trump over security guarantees for Ukraine” are necessary.
Trump had said on Tuesday that the war should have ended a long time ago. In this context, he blamed the Ukrainians for mistakes: “You could have never started it. You could have made a deal.” There is a leadership in Kiev that has allowed a war to take place that should never have happened, he claimed, further calling on the Ukraine to hold elections and claiming that Zelensky’s approval rate is at four percent.
“For Trump, the strength of law has ceased to be relevant. Now it’s the law of the stronger that applies”, said Roth: “And as far as he is concerned, Europe has at least nothing to say militarily.” Unfortunately, the hastily convened meeting of state and government heads in Paris on Monday “did not show a signal of unity. Important EU member states have clearly not yet heard the call.”
For years, “the global system conflict between liberal democracy and illiberal autocracy has been raging”, said Roth: “Trump has now switched sides for the USA. He is strengthening the phalanx of autocracies and illiberal democracies. The Ukraine is the main victim. Trump is conducting the business of the Russian terrorist state, if he takes up Kremlin propaganda about the lack of legitimacy of Zelensky and the Ukraine’s share of responsibility for the war.” The US president is thus threatening the democratic stability of Ukraine. “Trump seems to be putting cooperation with Russia over the interests of the attacked Ukraine”, said the SPD politician.