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News Analysis
Europeans Fear Trump Is Giving Up Leverage to Putin Even Before Peace Talks Begin
Diplomats at the Munich Security Conference were uttering “appeasement,” with all its historical resonance, to describe the Trump administration’s approach to negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
Kaja Kallas, the top foreign policy official for the European Union, speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Friday. Credit… Michaela Stache/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Feb. 14, 2025
The top foreign policy official for the European Union had a blunt assessment on Friday of the Trump administration’s apparent willingness to give Russia’s leader, Vladimir V. Putin, much of what he wants in Ukraine, even before negotiations to end the three-year war begin.
“It’s appeasement,” the official, Kaja Kallas, declared at the Munich Security Conference. “It has never worked.”
Ms. Kallas, a former prime minister of Estonia, was hardly the only European diplomat uttering the word “appeasement,” with all its historical resonance, though she was one of the few willing to do so on the record.
It was an almost-universal description of the Trump administration’s disorganized and often publicly contradictory approach to the questions seizing the continent: What kind of peace deal does President Trump have in mind? And will it be done with Mr. Putin over the heads of both the Ukrainians and the Europeans, whom Mr. Trump apparently expects to bear the burden of Ukraine’s future security?
After days of speeches and private meetings in Munich, many officials said they were more confused than before they had arrived. Statements made by the U.S. defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, in his first effort at international diplomacy ran counter to statements made by Vice President JD Vance, also on his first international venture since his inauguration.
And European officials said they had tried, unsuccessfully, to extract from Mr. Trump’s national security team any plan for making sure that Mr. Putin did not simply use a cease-fire to rebuild his decimated military and, in a few years, return to take the rest of Ukraine.
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