Long read: 'Biden provoked Putin' & Europe's failing

On February 12, 2025, in a post on the social media platform Truth Social, Trump said he had a "lengthy and highly productive phone call' with Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.

In the same post, Trump wrote: "I have asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of the CIA John Ratcliffe, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and Ambassador and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, to lead the negotiations which, I feel strongly, will be successful."

He said he later spoke to Zelenskyy but remained noncommittal about whether Ukraine would be an equal participant in the peace talks. This was an apparent signal that Kyiv could be presented with a deal negotiated behind its back, a dramatic shift from the Biden administration’s policy of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

US President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that Zelensky "better move fast, or he will not have a country left. "

Labelling Zelensky "a dictator", Trump writes: "I love Ukraine, but Zelensky has done a terrible job, his country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died."

Trump says in the meantime, the US is "successfully negotiating an end to the war with Russia".

• For context: Zelensky's presidential term expired last May, however, Ukraine has been under martial law since the Russian invasion in February 2022, which means presidential elections are suspended

 US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine and said Europe must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and non-lethal aid to Ukraine. He also confirmed that US troops would not take part in any peacekeeping operation.

On February 13, 2025, Trump confirmed that he does not see Ukraine joining NATO due to Russia’s position and blamed his predecessor, Joe Biden, for "provoking" Moscow into launching its full-scale war.

Trump stated that he continues to support US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments about Ukraine’s NATO membership not being part of a diplomatic settlement to the war. He said "I don’t see any way that a country in Russia’s position could allow them [the Ukrainians – ed.] to join NATO. I don’t see that happening."

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Let us begin with Trump's false accusation: "...and blamed his predecessor, Joe Biden, for "provoking" Moscow into launching its full-scale war."

It has been widely reported that the war in Ukraine started on February 24, 2022. But what occurred before that date?

There has never been a formal declaration of war on Ukraine, as was the case on February 22, 2014.

If we go back to the Soviet era, Moscow did not declare war on Afghanistan days before it invaded the country in 1979. War was not declared against Dagestan in 1999 or Georgia in 2008.

Russia has a history of never declaring war. 

In our opinion, one cannot say the war in Ukraine has lasted for three years.

In March 2022, Putin forbade the Kremlin from referring to it as war. This restriction resonated through all state-controlled media. He even implemented a law that bans journalists from calling the Ukraine conflict a 'war' or an 'invasion.' It was either termed a "military operation" or a "special military operation."

Considering that no declaration of war was issued, the war in Ukraine has its roots in the association talks between the European Commission and the then-president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, which Putin jeopardized. This triggered a revolution in Ukraine that forced Yanukovich to flee the country.

In January 2014, Putin sent the FSB to Simferopol in Crimea for a covert operation and to organize a fake referendum. He sent the Spetsnaz to Luhansk City to set up a presence. Putin already started to invade Ukraine amid the battle between the Berkut militia and the protesters in Kiyv.

On February 20th and 21st, we found videos showing large military convoys heading from Krasnodar Krai in Russia into the direction of the Crimea Bridge, and from Rostov Oblast in Russia to the border of Donetsk Oblast in Ukraine.

When the convoys from Krasnodar Krai crossed the Crimea Bridge and entered the Crimea peninsula via Kerch, Ukraine was invaded. The Russian invaders met no armed resistance from Ukrainian troops. The war itself didn't start in Crimea but a month later in the Donetsk region where it began with an insurgency organized by FSB Colonel Igor 'Strelkov' Girkin. The war has never been declared ended since then. That is why we call this period "episode 1" of  Putin's created conflict he fights out in Ukraine.

In August 2021, there were elections in Belarus but stolen by sit-tight dictator Lukashenko. The people went onto the streets to protest the stealing. A brutal crackdown followed with many protesters wounded or killed, and thousands put in jail. Some 350.000 people have left the country since then.

In response to the brutal crackdown, the EU imposed sanctions on Belarus. Lukashenko retaliated by sanctioning imports from the European Union while continuing with his crackdown. Another EU package of sanctions followed.

Lukashenko decided to target EU member state Poland by allowing migrants to enter the country via Belarus. It came to a border crisis that escalated after Belarusian border militia fired over the border fence into Polish territory, which forced the dictator to rush to Moscow.

The shooting incident triggered tensions with NATO and would risk the activation of Art. 5 as Poland is a member of the military alliance. Putin exploited this situation by sending two nuclear-capable bombers from Engels airbase in Russia to the Belarusian-Polish border under the gush of  "patrol".

In December 2021, Lukashenko announced that military drills would be held in Belarus but gave no specific date. He repeated the announcement a month later but no date was given. The date became known when in Russia mass deployment of tanks, armored vehicles, heavy weapons, and troops was in full swing.

In the first week of February 2022, Putin announced to hold the ZAPAD drills in Belarus from February 10 to February 17, 2022, while the drills are traditionally held in September each year. By the time that ZAPAD was supposed to be ended, Putin extended the drills to February 20, 2022.

Russian troops who were supposed to leave Belarus by the end of the drills, attacked Ukraine from the north. The second episode of Putin's imperial conflict became a fact.

The war in Ukraine shouldn't have been considered begun on February 24, 2022, so three years ago. It has never ended.

CHANCES MISSED

The EU represents one in a series of efforts to integrate Europe since World War II. At the end of the war, several Western European countries sought closer economic, social, and political ties to achieve economic growth and military security and to promote a lasting reconciliation between France and Germany.

It began with the formation of the European Economic Community (EEC) by Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands following the success of the Coal and Steel Treaty. Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom joined later. The aim was to foster closer links and boost economic growth through increased trade. Britain would leave the EEC as it sought sovereignty over its internal affairs, which was also why it left the EU years later (BREXIT).

By the Maastricht Treaty (formally known as the Treaty on European Union; 1991), which went into force on November 1, 1993, the European Economic Community was renamed the European Community and was embedded into the EU as the first of its three “pillars” (the second being a common foreign and security policy and the third being police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters).

Since the renaming into the European Union in Maastricht, Netherlands, the alliance has mainly focused on economic growth among its member states. bilateral relations with states outside the union, and security which didn't include a collective defense. How is that?

The Treaty of Brussels was signed by the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands on 17 March 1948, establishing the Western Union (WU), an intergovernmental defense alliance that also promoted economic, cultural, and social collaboration.

The Western Union's founding Treaty of Brussels was amended at the 1954 Paris Conference as a result of the failure of the Treaty establishing the European Defence Community to gain French ratification: The General Treaty (German: Deutschlandvertrag) of 1952 formally named the EDC as a prerequisite of the end of Allied occupation of Germany, and there was a desire to include Germany in the Western defense architecture.

The Modified Brussels Treaty (MBT) transformed the Western Union into the Western European Union, at which point Italy and West Germany were admitted.

Although the WEU established by the Modified Brussels Treaty was significantly less powerful and ambitious than the original Western Union, German membership of the WEU was considered sufficient for the military occupation of Germany to end in accordance with the General Treaty.

The WEU had no standing army but depended on cooperation between its members. Its tasks ranged from the most modest to the most robust and included humanitarian, rescue, and peacekeeping tasks as well as tasks for combat forces in crisis management, including peacemaking.

Britain has always been against the introduction of European autonomous defence capacities but it signed the Sain-Malo declaration in 1998. This marked a turning point as the declaration endorsed the creation of a European security and defense policy, including a European military force capable of autonomous action. US Secretary of State, Madeleine Allbright was against the declaration as she found it undermining NATO.

A year later, it was decided to incorporate the role of the WEU within the EU and was given an integral role in giving the EU an independent defense capability, playing a major role in defined military tasks of humanitarian, disarming, peacekeeping, and peacemaking nature.

Between 2009 and 2011, there was much discussion about what to do with the WEU following the introduction of Lisbon, including plans to scrap the WEU.

The first sign of its end emerged in March 2010 when Britain's Foreign Office Minister Chris Bryant gave notice that the UK intended to withdraw from the Western European Union within a year. At the end of the month. the German Foreign Affairs Ministry announced Germany's intention to withdraw from the Modified Brussels Treaty.

That same year, the Spanish Presidency of the WEU, on behalf of the 10 Member States of the Modified Brussels Treaty, announced the collective decision to withdraw from the Treaty and to close the WEU organization by June 2011.

On June 30, 2011, the WEU officially ceased to exist.

But, European NATO members had a chance to change course when Donald Trump in June 2018 accused the countries of not contributing enough to NATO. He repeated the accusation amid the second episode of Putin's war in Ukraine. Europe failed to understand that his accusations were sending a dual message, that he was not a supporter of NATO, and that Europe should take care of its security.

Trump's stance on Ukraine is not just to the phone call he had with Putin.

When it comes to Ukraine and Russia, Trump's first presidency from 2016 to 2020 should have been a warning.

In 2016, he asserted that Putin would not go into Ukraine while the Russian autocrat was already waging war in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine since March 2014 (see first part of this long read) after he had seized and annexed Crimea. The assertion was made amid controversy, that his presidential election campaign colluded with the Kremlin.

In 2018, he sanctioned seven Russian oligarchs and the 12 companies they own or control, 17 senior Russian government officials, and a state-owned Russian weapons trading company and a bank it owns. And on July 18, 2019, the Trump administration withheld $250 million of military aid to Ukraine.

In 2019, Trump said to Zelenskyy: "I really hope that you and President Putin get together and can solve your problem, That would be a tremendous achievement. And I know you're trying to do that." In just a couple of sentences, Trump dashed Ukrainian hopes of more active U.S. support in securing a durable peace with Moscow.

The most clear signal that year was when Trump utterly said that Ukraine wasn't a "real country", and that it was always part of Russia. He just ignored that Ukraine was one of the Warsaw Pact countries before the Soviet Union collapsed. The Russian Federation, as it officially is called, didn't exist at that time.

SECURITY & DEFENSE

Security and defense are two different issues where security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm. Beneficiaries of security may be persons and social groups, objects and institutions, ecosystems, or any other entity or phenomenon vulnerable to unwanted change. Defense is about preventing attacks, guarding, and fortification.

When it is about defense, the EU is a powerless alliance because its composition prevents any form of autonomous anticipation as decision-making on foreign affairs relies on decision-making on foreign affairs by each member state. The EU (read: EC) needs all member states together to reach an agreement on a proposed decision. 

But, there are too many member states. Each member state maintains the sovereignty of its policies about defense while having the right to adjust a voted decision on security within the frame of national policies.

As we wrote earlier, Britain has been against a collective defense for years, which was one of the main causes why the EU failed to form such a defense. There must be a unanimous vote. If there isn't, the proposal will not be implemented.

Now, the issue of collective defense has emerged again since Trump's phone call with Putin. In that call, Ukraine and the EU are not part of the talks about ending the war while it is about the war in Ukraine and the security of the European Union, not Europe. So, two countries pretend to have the right to decide over millions of people who do not live in the United States and Russia.

It may have alarmed Europe. But can, if not how will it anticipate when looking at its history, structure, and its functioning?

The moment to anticipate collectively is not there because of political transformations across Europe where populism was on the rise like in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. Hungary maintained a troublemaker and sided with Russia. 

In 2023, Brussels had even more troubles with one of the tiniest member states, the Netherlands where the government of the then-prime minister Mark Rutte constantly meddled in decision making even on issues which have nothing to do with the country.

If the latest election in Germany was won by the populist part AfD, it would be a threat to the military aid for Ukraine. Such a threat has been in the Netherlands since the populist party PVV won the 2023 general election. Luckily for Ukraine, the German conservative party CSU/CDU won the election.

Still, we don't see Brussels influencing the Russo-American meddling in Ukraine's sovereignty. It needs to have its own defense, military, and similar capabilities. Even then, it would be contrary to the functioning of NATO.