EU leaders are gathering for an emergency summit in Brussels targeted on methods to beef up the continent’s defence capabilities and the way greatest to help Ukraine — each militarily and diplomatically.
US President Donald Trump’s strikes to open bilateral peace negotiations with Russia, his threats to finish US safety safety to European allies who fail to spend extra on defence and his dramatically soured relationship with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy have turned generations of US-European relations on their head and plunged EU leaders into disaster.
Joined by Zelenskyy for talks in Brussels, the EU’s 27 nationwide leaders will purpose to provide political backing to a raft of latest proposals from the European Fee geared toward facilitating a surge in defence spending — a push given enormous impetus this week by incoming German chancellor Friedrich Merz’s transfer to finish Berlin’s historic fiscal constraints.
Settlement on help to Ukraine, nonetheless, is prone to be troublesome given the stance of Hungary’s chief Viktor Orbán, who has seized on Trump’s stance in direction of Kyiv to demand the EU reassess greater than three years of help to Ukraine and as an alternative push for speedy peace talks.
The summit follows a fortnight of frantic shuttle diplomacy between Washington, London and Paris by Europe’s most senior leaders, in an try to each devise a European “peace plan” probably involving troops on the bottom in Ukraine, and preserve Trump engaged in supporting Ukraine and defending Europe.
