Berlin, Germany (Welttexpress). In less than two weeks, US President Trump has turned the geopolitical world of the EU elites upside down. Due to their years of detachment from any reality and claims such as “Ukraine is winning”, they no longer know which way is up and which way is down. A sight to behold.
“With the flat hand in the soup” – this was the headline of the Berliner Zeitung on February 14, 2025 after the appearance of US Vice President J.D. Vance in Munich at the annual UN Security Conference of NATO warmongers. The picture reminded me more of the description of chaos when a fox, this time an American one, invades the henhouse and the European poultry flies around cackling wildly.
The first clear signal that the geopolitical world view of the European government and EU elites was doomed came in the middle of the week before last, around February 5. At this point, Trump had apparently already spoken to Putin for the first time. He then appeared before the press and explained that he had asked the UK to take over the chairmanship of the “International Support Group for Ukraine”. According to reports, 50 countries are involved in this group. The group regularly met at the US airbase in Ramstein, Rhineland-Palatinate, where it had always been chaired by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin or his deputy.
The British were delighted to be honored with the opportunity to chair this illustrious group of 50 countries. However, they were too vain and too arrogant to realize that this “gift” from Trump to his political enemy Keir Starmer was highly poisoned.
The following Sunday, the next, this time clearer, signal for the USA’s withdrawal from the Ukraine conflict came from Mike Waltz, Donald Trump’s Chief National Security Advisor. In one of these Sunday talk shows, he said that from now on the security of Ukraine is the responsibility of the Europeans and that Ukraine is Europe’s problem and not that of the USA. On the same day, Trump added in another program on this topic that there will be no more free arms deliveries to Ukraine in the future. In future, Kiev will have to pay for everything, for example with its deposits of “rare earths”.
With these statements, the Trump administration had already made it clear that the United States wanted to withdraw from the war in Ukraine and shift the responsibility for Ukraine entirely onto Europe. At least that was the state of affairs on the weekend of February 8 and 9. Anyone who still doubted this was confirmed the following Wednesday, February 12, during the eagerly awaited appearance of the new US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at the NATO summit of defence ministers in Brussels.
On this day, the assembled anti-Russian warmongers among the European ruling elites received an unexpected and brutal shock treatment that must have deeply shaken them in their sacred faith in NATO. All those politicians who had closely linked their careers to the war and the victory in Ukraine and had therefore always argued eloquently and with commitment for the continuation of the war over the past three years must have been dealt a severe blow by Hegseth’s words. Indeed, Hegseth’s statements resembled hammer blows that were literally breathtaking for the NATO Ministerial Council meeting.
Here is the first hammer blow in Hegseth’s translated original quote: “A lasting peace for Ukraine must include robust security guarantees to ensure that the war does not start again. This must not be Minsk 3.0. However, the United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.”
There is political dynamite in this passage, because it contains the agreement to the Russian demand, whose frivolous and arrogant disregard by the US/EU/NATO leadership elites led to this war in the first place, namely the prospect of Ukraine’s membership of NATO and its armament of the country against Russia, which has already been going on for over a decade. And here Trump’s Secretary of Defense says it loud and clear: no NATO membership for Ukraine. Period! No putting off for ten or 20 years, but never! Hegseth certainly didn’t just say that off the cuff, it was a statement that had been carefully worked out at home in Washington. It was a key demand from the Kremlin, without which Russia would have seen no reason to believe in the seriousness of the American side.
But Hegseth went one step further towards the Russians by setting a clear limit to the NATO defense minister present and saying: “This must not be Minsk 3.0!”
This allusion to Minsk II was a slap in the face for Boris Pistorius, Germany’s chief war hawk, and his French counterpart. This was because Germany and France, as guarantor powers, had signed the Minsk II agreement for a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine in spring 2015, which was subsequently elevated to the level of an international treaty by the UN Security Council. In reality, however, Germany and France coldly used this international treaty to lie to Russia and play it against the wall.
At the beginning of 2023, when things were looking good for Ukraine on the front line for a few months and everyone in the collective West was already talking loudly about the Ukrainian victory over Russia, former Chancellor Merkel and her French counterpart at the time, President Hollande, also wanted to share in the credit for having inflicted a defeat on Russia. Merkel was the first to do so and then Hollande also appeared before the press. Both boasted that they had only signed MINSK II to buy time for NATO to arm Ukraine. After the Maidan coup in 2014, no one in the West was obviously interested in a peaceful solution to the crisis in Ukraine.
The sentence: “This must not be Minsk 3.0!” was followed by Hegseth’s statement: “A lasting peace for Ukraine must include robust security guarantees to ensure that war does not start again.”
Supporters of Ukraine interpret this sentence to mean that a negotiated peace with “robust security guarantees” for Ukraine is to be ensured. But the security guarantees mentioned here cannot be meant for Ukraine. Because if they were meant for Ukraine, the mention of security guarantees at this point in Hegseth’s speech would make little sense.
Let’s look again at the wording of this passage: “A lasting peace for Ukraine must include robust security guarantees… This must not be Minsk 3.0.”
In my opinion, this passage does not contain any guarantees for Ukraine, but rather addresses the question of why Russia should get involved in a Minsk-like document again at all without receiving robust security guarantees that it will not become another Minsk II!
Moreover, the Americans have long known from Putin himself that the Russians are not interested in a local ceasefire in Ukraine, and certainly not in a front frozen for years with Western troops on the other side, as the war-mongering European elites have in mind. Instead, Russia is pursuing its declared goal since the end of the Cold War of a pan-European security concept in which NATO’s security cannot be expanded at the expense of Russia’s security; in other words, a concept in which the security of one side also takes into account the security needs of the other side. The new Trump team, which for several reasons is seeking a lasting peace with Russia that is not disrupted by quarrelling NATO-European elites, seems to agree with this.
In concrete terms, this concept for a “lasting peace in Ukraine” means that Western troops and weapons must be withdrawn from a neutral residual Ukraine and ultimately the US missile bases in Romania and Poland must also be dismantled. Their destabilizing installation not far from Russia’s borders was justified at the time by the official US claim of an alleged US threat from non-existent Iranian intercontinental missiles, which was, however, diligently spread by Western “quality media”.
Now comes the second hammer blow: In the context of a peace settlement within Ukraine, which European powers might want to guarantee, Hegseth said: “A security guarantee must be supported by capable European and non-European troops. If at any point these troops are sent to Ukraine as peacekeepers, it should not be as part of a NATO mission and they should not fall under Article 5. There must also be robust international monitoring of the line of contact. Let’s be clear! No US troops will be deployed to Ukraine as part of any security guarantee!”
Hegseth could not have made it clearer: no security guarantee in Ukraine for Ukraine. NO more NATO operation. In other words, he said: It’s up to you Europeans if you want to continue on your own, but not with us. There will be no US military boots on Ukrainian soil! If you do anything, anything at all, it’s entirely up to you Europeans, just like Trump handed over the chairmanship of the International Ukraine Defense Group in Ramstein to the United Kingdom. Now the whole Ukraine project is Europe’s child, no longer a US problem. This reflects Trump’s position, who has been against this US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine from the beginning.
What Trump sees in Ukraine is a war being waged by the very same European elites who have mocked and disrespected him in the past. These Europeans had previously cooperated with the “Deep State” within the Biden administration. Now the Europeans are on their own and are desperately seeking help from Trump, who, however, has a completely different global security concept and wants to cooperate with Russia, unlike the fanatical European Russophobes.
The third hammer blow: “Ensuring European security must be an imperative for European NATO members. As part of this, Europe must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and non-lethal assistance to Ukraine.”
Hegseth makes it clear here that the Europeans will stand alone with their further aid to Ukraine. The generous provision of free US financial and weapons gifts to Ukraine is over. It is up to you Europeans to organize and pay for it.
All of this will raise the question of whether NATO has any future at all; because on this particular issue, which they have described as so crucial, it is clear that the West and NATO have lost. It’s remarkable how quickly Trump has distanced himself from all of this. Not my war!
The NATO Europeans, the Baerbocks, Merz, Pistorius, Macrons and Starmers, together with the mayors of the Baltic poison dwarf states, will not be able to face up to this task. Their devotion to Ukraine has been dealt a severe, unexpected blow, and they probably haven’t yet fully realized that they are now alone. To attempt the impossible – to fight on alone against the Russians – will be very expensive in every respect, but especially for Germany – financially, politically, economically and socially.
It would be much cheaper to make peace with Russia and work together again to promote mutual prosperity. However, this will not happen with the elites currently in power in Europe and Germany. Unfortunately, they are incapable of taking such a step because otherwise they would have to admit their failure at home, lose their jobs and bring shame upon themselves. They are the type of people who would rather lead the whole nation into the abyss if it means they can enjoy the benefits of power for a few more years.
