European leaders pledge to continue support for Kyiv despite differences

European leaders vowed continued support for Ukraine despite their outrage against the administration of US President Donald Trump for discarding its allies in the ongoing peace talks on the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

European Council President Antonio Costa announced on Thursday that he will go to Kyiv on Monday with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to reaffirm the EU's support. Monday marks the third anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

European leaders were shocked after US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels on Feb 12 that US troops won't be deployed in Ukraine for peacekeeping while soldiers from NATO's European member states there won't be covered by Article 5, which stipulates that an attack on any member is an attack on the whole alliance.

US envoy to Ukraine Keith Kellogg told the Munich Security Conference on Feb 15 that Europeans won't have a seat at the negotiation table. On Feb 14, in Munich, US Vice-President JD Vance delivered a blistering attack on Europe — from democracy and freedom of speech to migration.

French President Emmanuel Macron hastily assembled a meeting in Paris on Feb 17 with several European leaders to discuss the crisis. He held another larger meeting of 19 nations on Feb 19, with many attending via video link, to discuss how to respond to Trump.

Macron said it was unacceptable for the US and Russia to negotiate over European leaders' heads. "The security concerns of the Europeans will have to be taken into account," he said.

Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will travel separately to Washington this week. They are expected to try to convince Trump not to rush to a cease-fire deal with Russia at any cost, keep Europe involved and discuss military guarantees to Ukraine, Reuters reported.

EU ambassadors met twice last week to talk about sending arms to Ukraine and bolstering defense. But Costa has not yet called for a summit of all member states' leaders to address the crisis.

EU leaders have fought back against Trump who called Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky a "dictator" last week. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who is likely to step down after the Sunday election in his country, said that "it's simply wrong and dangerous to deny President Zelensky democratic legitimacy".

Von der Leyen also rebuffed US criticism. She said in Munich that Europe's financial and military support to Ukraine has amounted to 134 billion euros ($141 billion), more than anyone else.

The 27 EU member states currently spend around 2 percent of their GDP on defense. Their total defense spending has jumped from 200 billion euros before the conflict to over 320 billion euros in 2024.

"But we will need to increase that number considerably once again. Because from just below 2 percent to above 3 percent will mean hundreds of billions of more investment every year," she said, clearly in a response to Trump's call for NATO members to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense, which no NATO member has reached so far.

The European Commission estimated that the EU may need to spend an extra 500 billion euros over the next decade to fill the critical gaps in European defense.

While most European leaders agreed to boost defense spending, there is no consensus on where the money will come from. For instance, issuing joint debt is a controversial issue among the member states.

Von der Leyen and Costa both expressed that the EU has several potential financing options, including national spending, an expanded role for the EU's European Investment Bank and private capital.

The current European Commission, which took office on Dec 1, has promised to present its White Paper on the Future of European Defense in its first 100 days in office.

"Europe's disunity and dependence on the US means that European countries will broadly accept whatever emerges from talks between the US and Russia," Jeremy Shapiro, director of research at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said after senior US and Russian officials met in Riyadh.

Shapiro believes that Europeans need to form their own peace plan, deploy carrots and sticks, and above all, show that they have sufficient unity to implement these.

He sighed that instead, Europeans emerged from the Feb 17 summit in Paris publicly fighting over deploying a peacekeeping force to Ukraine.

"The message to the US(and Russia) was clear: we do not need to invite Europeans to the table. Until they can put their own house in order, Europeans will have no choice but to watch from the sidelines," he wrote on the council's website.

He Zhigao, a researcher at the Institute of European Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the EU is both disappointed and outraged by the Trump-led peace talks with Russia. "There is no doubt that the EU's role in the conflict will be heavily influenced by the US-Russia peace talks," he said, citing the fractures among EU member states and between the EU and the US.

"EU is incapable of handling the Russian threat by itself and incapable of supplanting the US military aid to Ukraine. But it can play a role in helping Ukraine join the EU and providing financial assistance," He said.

Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, described the current situation as an "unprecedented trans-Atlantic crisis".

"By negotiating with Russia over European heads and intervening in European politics, the United States is not only decoupling from but deciding for and disrupting Europe," he said.

In a post on Thursday right after Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk's call for financing Ukraine with frozen Russian assets, Gould-Davies said that "with the US signaling abandonment of Ukraine and scaling back of commitment to Europe, the case for seizing $300 billion of frozen Russian assets and transferring them to Ukraine is now unassailable".