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Let's talk about this with Sir Robin Niblett, former director and chief executive of Chatham House
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And we'll hear in a moment from Tom Rivers, American broadcaster and journalist
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Sir Robin, first of all, good afternoon to you. Hi, Sheila. When you heard that this group of European leaders were all jumping on planes and going to Washington at the same time
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essentially as a kind of support system for Wladimir Zelensky, what did you think
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well the most obvious thing to think and i suppose that i thought as well is that they want to avoid
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a repeat of the february 28th debata that you referred to a minute ago zelensky was was left
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alone if you might remember he then left and flew directly to london where everyone huddled together
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with him and in a way zelensky and the european countries now form a unit and one of the legacies
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of that terrible day in the Oval Office four months, six months, five months ago, whatever it was
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is that Europe knows that they cannot leave Trump alone with Zelensky
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Zelensky doesn't want to be left alone with Trump either. And most importantly, this is because European security is going to be fundamentally affected
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by the type of deal, if there is a deal, done between Putin, Trump and Zelensky
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So it's not just a case of sort of standing up for him for moral reasons and making sure he's not left alone
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They want to make sure that any deal that is done is done and is relevant for their security
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Now, unlike February 28th, France and Britain at the very least and a number of other countries represented there
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said they will provide their own security guarantees or assurances by perhaps having troops on the ground and so on
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So there is a sense now that Zelensky plus the European leaders form a unit
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And so they want to make sure that Trump understands you can't play one off against the other
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and is this as much as anything about that new unit but you know the european leaders we come on to Keir Starmer role in all of this in a moment but is it about them saying look we to a degree anyway we done what you asked for We committed
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to more independence on our part. We've committed to living up monetarily to our role in NATO
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We are asking you almost for a kind of moral presence here, rather than always being the one
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with your hand in your pocket? Look, I don't think anyone amongst the European leaders
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Norzlensky, think they will change President Trump's transactional mental outlook. They also don't think that they will change his ego
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And like Putin, they want to be able to use the ego to their advantage
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And so Putin flattered Trump with references to the 2020 election and the war wouldn't have happened
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if you'd been there, et cetera, et cetera. and business deals and so on
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The Europeans are trying to flatter him, you know, in a different way. Now, we are committed
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You asked us to spend 5% on defence, 2035, let's not mention it
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But that's a, you know, a great commitment. We have said, as Europeans, we will buy your weapons to help protect Ukraine
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You don't have to give them any more. We will buy them off you
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We will protect Ukraine. You won't have to. You know, they're trying to remind Trump of the deals that are there
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But their most important point in the end, who's going to make Trump look more like the winner
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In the end, Trump, I think, judges everything by whether he comes out looking like a winner
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The risk of the Alaska summit is that Trump did not look like a winner
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Putin looked like the winner. And Trump has to change those scales
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And by the Europeans being there, they hope they can change the dynamic and help Trump coming out looking like a winner
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For that, there has to be a deal. The deal is complicated. We can talk about that in a minute. Worth saying isn it that the NATO chief will be there as well Mark Rutte He famously wrote that note that was really obsequious wasn it
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It was just, I mean, people, it was so obsequious, people thought it was a fake
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It was a skit, but it was. He took one for Europe, you know, that one
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Now that he's no longer a prime minister, but a secretary general of a national organisation
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you know, he can afford to take a few. It's an important figure given the role NATO, including America, must play here
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Yeah. No, look, I think Mark Ritter being that he's experienced, he's an experienced politician in his own right
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Prime Minister of Netherlands for much longer than most prime ministers or ever Prime Minister of Netherlands
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And he has been almost a sort of whisperer for the American position inside NATO
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very much pushed the 5% target and talking about kind of a realism that's needed to make the right kind of deal
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So I think it's good that he's there. It's good that Oslo von der Leyen is there. She can be tough. We know that Trump doesn't like the EU, but he did supposedly do a trade deal with Oslo von der Leyen just a month ago in Turnberry. And they seem to get on relatively well at that meeting
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So this is the heavyweight team going on. Each of them has a bilateral relationship, including Alexander Stubb, the Finnish, very experienced president, former prime minister, foreign minister, and Giorgio Maloney, the Italian leader, close to Trump, more to the right, very tough on migration
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I mean, it really is the who's who. And a word on our own, our own prime minister, Keir Starmer, very different natures, him and Donald Trump
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And yet they seem to gel. Trump seems to like him. I think he likes him because he likes the UK to a certain extent He seems to be able to separate out what he does not like about the UK what he sees as the kind of woke approach to freedom of speech the online safety act you know immigration policy those kinds of issues He able to separate it out but I think he does it partly also because to the extent he
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has a relationship with Starmer, he can sometimes be tougher with the EU. So again, I think it's a
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little bit transactional. And Britain, like every other country in Europe, is always getting on well
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with Trump under sufferance. At any moment, it could change. And everyone has to be very careful
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not to lose their moment. And on the deal, potential deal, Donald Trump ruling out Ukraine joining NATO
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ruling out them reclaiming Crimea. I mean, both of these things have been said before
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not just by Donald Trump. What's your sense of what's being normalised here
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in any potential deal? Look, if I were to try to read the runes
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obviously everyone would struggle to do this with any accuracy but i was struck that if those are his
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two trump's two opening lines to zelensky they are not the toughest the worry would be if he'd said
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zelensky better be ready to hand over some territory or there won't be a deal if he starts
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with you won't be joining nato by the way there's most european members of nato i know most many of
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them including germany do not think that ukraine should be a member of nato so that's not a radical
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And yet our own minister today, Stephen Kinnock, he was on to talk about health and care issues, but we asked him about it
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And he said Ukraine's future has to be in Ukraine's hand. What it seeks is down to Ukraine
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Which is a softer approach, isn't it? I was about to say, but important words. Ukraine's future is up to Ukraine
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But of course, NATO's future is up to the members of NATO. You can only become a member of NATO if you have unanimous support
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That includes Hungary, by the way. So, you know, I think to say that one of the red lines is not an extreme red line and you won't get Crimea back
