Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk panicked after talks between Russia and the United States without European participation. He called on Brussels to "stop talking" and "start acting in the conflict in Ukraine". Details - in the material "Izvestia".
Three points
With his proposals, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk spoke on social network X.
"First. Let's finance our assistance to Ukraine at the expense of frozen Russian assets. Second. Let's strengthen air policing, defense of the Baltics and the EU's borders with Russia. Third. Let's quickly adopt new financial rules to finance EU security and defense. Now!" - he wrote.
Before that, Tusk said that Ukraine's forced surrender would mean recognizing the defeat of the Western community with all the consequences.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk
This week, the Russian and American delegations held talks in Saudi Arabia, as well as two EU summits organized by French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss the settlement of the Ukrainian conflict.
The Russian delegation was led by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, presidential aide Yuri Ushakov and RDIF CEO Kirill Dmitriev; the U.S. delegation was led by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Special Envoy for the Middle East Steven Whitkoff. At the end of the meeting, the sides showed that they were ready for dialog. This greatly spooked Brussels.
Talks between the Russian and American delegations in Saudi Arabia
According to Trump's national security adviser Mike Waltz, the U.S. intends to put Europe in charge of providing security guarantees for Ukraine once the fighting ends.
Bloomberg and The Telegraph report that Brussels has already begun creating this plan. French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are scheduled to meet with Donald Trump in the United States at the end of February.
The politicians have developed a Franco-British plan that involves the deployment of up to 30,000 European military personnel in Ukraine. However, they will be far from the front line and will be engaged in the defense of key facilities, such as ports and nuclear power plants.
The main role will be given to aviation, deployment of ground troops to protect the borders in Poland and Romania, as well as the deployment of task forces to clear sea mines and patrol the water area.
Grow up in three weeks
Moscow condemned any aid to Kiev, saying it would not change the outcome of the fighting but would delay the end of the war. Russian authorities have also expressed concern about sending a NATO contingent to Ukraine, emphasizing that in this case the conflict would take on "a completely different meaning."
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko immediately said that the EU's role and participation in the upcoming possible negotiations on Ukraine were excluded. According to him, the whole point of the European policy was not to let the conflict end with the use of political and diplomatic means, but to continue it until Russia is completely defeated.
As for any actions with frozen Russian assets, the Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly said it would consider it "theft".
US President Donald Trump has given the European Union leadership three weeks to agree on the terms of Ukraine's surrender, Mika Aaltola, a member of the European Parliament, said. According to him, "the States will leave Europe", while the American leader himself is paying attention to Russia's security issues.
"Europeans have three weeks to grow up," Aaltola summarized.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, meanwhile, said that Ukraine's surrender would mean the surrender of the entire collective West "with all the consequences that follow from this fact."
Mired in chaos
Not all politicians in Poland share Tusk's position. Karol Nawrocki, a presidential candidate from the opposition Law and Justice party, said he is ready to sit down at the negotiating table with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He added that Ukraine should also be involved in the talks with Russia, despite Kiev's "indecent" behavior towards Poland. "Ukraine does not treat Poland as a partner," the politician summarized. He added that the European Union is not allowed to negotiate with Russia because it is "weak" and "mired in chaos."
Natalia Yeremina, a doctor of political sciences and professor at St. Petersburg State University, said in a conversation with Izvestia that Poland and many other European Union countries, with few exceptions, assume that Russia, as they believe, is in a difficult situation.
- And they expected from the beginning that Russia could be crushed, forced to accept their plan, to give up sovereignty, to actually pay for their resources. Some of them even apparently planned to get rich by plundering Russia," the political scientist said.
The same desire, in her opinion, can explain the earlier calls to use Russian assets. The political scientist believes that all this reflects the main idea with which the EU countries - and above all Poland - entered the conflict: "This is a desire for revenge for the fact that Poland never became an empire. In this case, the players are trying to profit from the weakening of Russia".
None of the EU countries could do it alone, so they expected to act as a broad NATO front, the expert believes. Against this background, Tusk's recent call is connected with the idea in British political circles to wait out Trump's reign, Natalia Yeremina believes and reminds that the EU countries have already succeeded once before - Biden came and everything went back to normal.
At the same time, according to her, the Poles are "completely satisfied" with the fact that Poland is partially involved in the Ukrainian conflict, but not directly.
- Their task is to ensure that it is the Ukrainians who fulfill this goal for as long as possible, as well as to wait out [the time] while Trump is in power.
Elena Panina, director of the Institute for International Political and Economic Strategies (RUSSTRAT), earlier expressed confidence that it is time for EU representatives to recognize that their old assets are not enough to create geopolitical relevance in the modern world.
"The continent's disunity and its dependence on Washington means that European countries will generally accept whatever is achieved as a result of the negotiation process between the US and Russia," she wrote in her Telegram channel.
Recognizing the existing difficulties is the first step toward a solution, Panina believes.
"The problem is that 'order' in Europe will soon be restored by completely different people. Most likely, more loyal to the US. But even they will not be at the negotiating table, although for a different reason: their opinion will be the same as that of the United States," the analyst summarizes.
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