After Trump ‘s ultimatum to Zelensky, the reaction of the EU institutions and major European states, Canada and Japan, meeting on the sidelines of the G20 in Johannesburg, was in line with what one might have supposed and hoped for.

Beyond the diplomatic language and ritual homage to the US President’s commitment to a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine, the joint statement of European and G20 leaders was very clear on at least three points.

The first is that this plan cannot be approved as it is and that ‘the draft constitutes a basis that will require further work’.

The second point is the explicit identification of the most unacceptable aspects of this plan: ‘Borders must not be changed by force…; the proposed limitations on the Ukrainian armed forces would makeUkraine vulnerable to future attacks’.

The third point is the affirmation of the right of each country to decide, and not only to accept or reject, the commitments assigned to it in the plan by the US: ‘The implementation of theEU and NATO elements would require the consent of the EU and NATO members respectively’.

The fact that this declaration found the unanimous consensus of all the G20 countries committed to supportingUkraine is a positive, but also equivocal fact, because some of the signatories – Spain and Italy in particular – have long reiterated that their political, financial and military readiness to support Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression and to guarantee the country’s security after a possible agreement is very limited, not to say little more than symbolic.

On the other hand, the fact that Sanchez and Meloni, despite the internal pro-Russians in their respective majorities, did not shy away from signing the joint statement may also represent proof that today the determination of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland and the Scandinavian and Baltic states would not have been undermined by the defection ofItaly and Spain and would on the contrary have led to the isolation and dangerous rapprochement of the latter with the officially pro-Russian European states.

The European response to Trump’s plan

Trump ‘s indirect response to the European position – ‘my plan is not final’ – suggests that the message has been received and understood, but in any case, given his character, one can hardly imagine that this will lead him to collaborate with the Europeans on a pro-Kyiv understanding. Simply, as was the case at the beginning of his term, Trump had to take note that the leading European countries are not willing to passively submit to his agreements with Putin against Zelensky.

It is not certain, however, that in the face of further European resistance, Trump will not decide to raise the level of confrontation even further and threaten not only the abandonment ofUkraine, but also of the European NATO front, which today represents the most strategically frightening risk for all European countries. This risk, however, also concerns the White House, to which the strategy of global disorder does not seem to bring the hoped-for consensus and for which an all-in on the link with Putin could have ruinous consequences on internal credibility and on the stability of the Republican constituency, which is expected in less than a year’s time at the midterm elections.

Calenda is right to argue that the so-called ‘peace forUkraine‘, which Trump is trying to impose, is more reminiscent of the 1938 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, by which Hitler and Stalin divided up Poland, than of the 1939 Munich Agreement, by which France and Germany left the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia to Germany.

Honour, dishonour and European security

However, the alternative facing the European countries is similar to the one that Churchill reproached Chamberlain and Daladier for failing to weigh up the consequences. Choosing dishonour to avoid war would result in a war even closer to the borders of those countries that delude themselves into thinking they can avoid it by handing overUkraine to Moscow ‘s aims and thus shifting the centre of gravity of the Kremlin‘s claims westwards.

In the face ofAmerica‘s betrayal, a rapid process of revival through new forms of political, military and industrial integration and the defence ofUkraine are the two indispensable conditions of freedom and security for all European states, bar none.

Without prejudice to the pro-Ukrainian stance of the European states, it is clear that the challenge that awaits them is on a different scale to the efforts made so far, although broadly compatible, at least in theory, with their possibilities.

Less than a week ago, before the first rumours of Trump ‘s new plan came out – new in the sense of once again collimating with the Kremlin ‘s growing demands – Ursula Von Der Leyen had sounded the alarm about a Ukrainian deficit to be filled with European aid of around EUR 140 billion for the years 2026 and 2027. This is a challenging figure, but corresponds to only 0.4 per cent of theEU ‘s GDP (excluding the UK and Norway).

It is clear that the higher the level of confrontation, the greater the European commitment will have to be, but – contrary to what Moscow ‘s dupes claim – it is not a commitment to saveUkraine, butEurope. The price of honour is not only much more commendable, but also much cheaper than that of dishonour.