The Week Everything Changed

The Russian-American meeting held on February 18 in Riyadh was the first of its kind in years, at least since the Russian aggression against Ukraine in February 2022.

The two delegations - led by Sergei Lavrov on one side and his American counterpart, Marco Rubio, on the other - agreed to restore more normal relations between the two countries. Negotiation mechanisms have been put in place regarding Ukraine, but no particular progress has been made at this stage. Lavrov demonstrated his usual intransigence by indicating that Russia would not accept any deployment by NATO members countries troops on Ukrainian soil as part of a settlement.

The Riyadh meeting concluded an eight-day sequence which may one day be seen as a fateful week for the fate of Ukraine, and without any doubt beyond that:

• On February 12, after a 90-minute telephone conversation with his Russian counterpart, the American president announced that he had agreed with Vladimir Putin to "immediately" begin negotiations for a ceasefire based on a freeze of the positions on the ground and a rejection of Ukraine's NATO candidacy.


• A few hours later during a meeting in Brussels at NATO headquarters, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, specified the American approach: "returning to the borders of pre-2014 is an unrealistic goal"; likewise, "Ukraine's accession to NATO seen by Washington as a realistic outcome to a settlement"; finally, peace will have to be guaranteed by a ‘deployment of European and non-European troops’ without it being a NATO operation and without the deployment of American troops;


• Since Munich, where the annual security conference was held, Washington's special representative for Ukraine, General Kellogg, announced over the weekend that the peace negotiations in Ukraine would be held between the Russians and Americans without the Europeans, with Ukrainian involvement, but this point was quickly denied by Washington.


• On the 17th, several European heads of state and government met at the Élysée Palace at the invitation of President Macron. These were the leaders of Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands and Denmark; the NATO Secretary General, the President of the European Council and the President of the Commission were also present.

Let us focus on this meeting on the 17th, and the one that followed on the 19th, both of which were convened with an unusually short notice for events of this level. As usual, the restricted composition of the first meeting was criticized by those absent. This led the Élysée to call a second meeting on the 19th, with the participation of the Baltic and Central European countries as well as Canada.

Essentially, according to what leaked from these discussions, four points of agreement emerged between Europeans: 1/ an agreement with Russia can only be reached on the basis of "peace through strength", as Trump himself proclaimed; 2/ Europeans are willing to increase their defense budgets to better share the burden with the United States; 3/ There should be no ceasefire agreement with Russia without a peace agreement, unless we fall back into the missteps that marred the implementation of the Minsk agreements. 4/ Finally, the participants are ready to provide Ukraine with security guarantees, under conditions to be discussed and depending on necessary American support.

In practice, and given the edicts issued in Brussels by Mr. Hegseth, it can only involve the deployment of a certain contingent of troops from European states, under conditions that, once again, remain to be defined.

The French, who have been promoting this idea for months, and now the British - who moved very quickly after the Trump-Putin phone call - are on the same page. The Poles claim to be more cautious, likely due to the proximity of their general elections. Chancellor Scholz left the meeting dissatisfied and Ms. Meloni was similarly unconvinced. The former is expected to lose his job in a few weeks and the latter will undoubtedly be guided by Washington’s wishes.

It has already been noted that Sergei Lavrov's first act in Riyadh was to reject the possibility of deploying forces from NATO countries in Ukraine. This proves that the concept discussed in Paris indeed addresses a real need - namely, preventing Ukraine from losing its sovereignty and falling back into Moscow's sphere of influence. The question remains whether the Europeans will be able to follow through on their logic until the end and perhaps even more so if Washington - that is President Trump - will stand up to Vladimir Putin on such a crucial point. After all, it was his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who officially introduced the idea of deploying foreign troops.

If we try to take a step back and imagine how things may evolve following this fateful week, three types of scenarios can be considered:

1. In the wake of Riyadh, negotiations are progressing quickly, notably during direct meetings between Putin and Trump. A de facto agreement based on the previously mentioned scheme - or any similar agreement - clearly unfavorable to Ukraine (limitation on its armaments, security guarantees reduced to ineffectual measures, constitutional reforms to introduce a right of veto for Russian speakers, etc.). In such a scenario, what would be the attitude of the Ukrainians on the one hand, and the Europeans on the other? Would the former reject the diktat of Washington and Moscow, and would the latter support it? In other words, while the spirit of Munich is clearly lurking over the ongoing Russian-American negotiations, is a new Yalta in the making? That is indeed, it must be said, the prevailing impression at the time this note was written;


2. Conversely, one can imagine that the negotiations drag on, with the Americans resisting the most exorbitant Russian demands; the former KGB agent that is Mr. Putin, will try to satisfy Mr. Trump's ego in order to prolong the discussions, without reaching an agreement unless he obtains the limitations of Ukrainian sovereignty that constitute his objective. Therefore, there is a concern that, as was the case in his approach to North Korea, the American president would turn away from the issue, and more or less abandon Ukraine to its fate;


3. Other scenarios can be imagined, including that of a collapse of one side or the other. Military or even social and political collapse on the Ukrainian side; economic and financial collapse, or in any case a deep crisis in these areas, on the Russian side.

From this perspective, Macron's visit to the White House on February 25th was a step - nothing more, nothing less. The French president had the opportunity to convey his position to Donald Trump, particularly on the need for European "boots on the ground" in Ukraine, in the event of a ceasefire. In an astonishing remark, the US president claimed that Putin agreed with this. However, Donald Trump remained evasive on many concerns raised by Macron. Meanwhile, in an unprecedented reversal, the United States - siding with Russia and a small coalition of other nations - voted against a European-led United Nations resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Two other developments will be closely watched in the coming days: will British Prime Minister Starmer, on his visit to Washington on the 27th, secure stronger commitments than the ones the French president obtained? And will the Ukrainians end up signing the one-sided agreement that the Trump administration wants to obtain regarding the capture of income from the country's rare earths and critical minerals? Such an agreement, immoral as it may be, would no doubt make Washington more interested in obtaining peace between Ukraine and Russia that is less unbalanced for the Ukrainians.

Perhaps history will ultimately record that the most important event of recent days lies elsewhere: in the assertion by the next German chancellor, Mr. Merz, that Europe must now fight on two fronts, Russia and the United States.

Copyright image : Ludovic MARIN / AFP
Emmanuel Macron and Ursula von der Leyen at the Élysée Palace on February 17, 2025