ABC Editorial: The simile was not a Munich, but Yalta

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has summoned for this Monday in “the main European countries” to discuss the scenario created by US president Donald Trump by offering direct negotiations of peace over Ukraine to Vladimir Putin and Volodimir Zelenski, of those that Europe would be excluded. The meeting was managed during an meeting of the ambassadors of several countries with the head of community diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, at the end of the Munich Security Conference. There it was decided that it was not an EU summit, but an informal meeting of governments that more or less share the same attitude against Trump, which would explain the absence of Hungarian Viktor Orbán, firm ally of the American.

Precisely the Paris Summit will go from exclusions, specifically that of the EU countries of the peace negotiations on Ukraine. Washington has summoned the representatives of Russia this week in Riad, capital of Saudi Arabia, to resume high -level contacts between the two countries and prepare the meeting between Trump and Putin. Many European countries believe that the Russian leader wants to make the restructuring of the postwar order the previous condition for a high fire, and this because at the Munich conference the historical comparisons were exhausted with the appointment held in 1938 in that same city between Hitler and the allies, and the meeting ended with the clear awareness that, in reality, the most adjusted historical simile is that the world walks towards a conference similar to that of Yalta, from February 1945, in a spa of the tsaries in Crimea where Stalin imposed the doctrine of the ‘areas of influence’ that caused the steel curtain to fall on Eastern Europe.

Other issues also add urgency to this “working meeting”, although French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot warned that it should not be “dramatized too much.” The Munich meeting was marked by the hostile speech of Vice President JD Vance towards the EU, but the meeting on Monday should not be the scene of the game of the offended, but to agree on a proactive policy against the US and Russia, without Forget that below Trump Europe has millions of allies in their country. The truth is that three quarters of NATO existence have managed to infant Europe, which is not aware of its great wealth and their population, but that has refused to fully develop the means to defend themselves. Russia’s economy is smaller than that of Italy and just over a tenth of the EU GDP, but it is the existence of NATO’s umbrella and the entertaining policies of the radical left that have dissolved military responsibilities and created The impression that Europe can shape the world without putting the media for it. The United Kingdom, one of the most disabled countries militarily, lived a real scandal when, shortly before the Falklands War, it was proposed to reduce the frigates of its real navy to 50. Today it is barely 18, of which only 12 are operational, according to figures published by ‘The Times’.

Macron has declared that Europe must intensify its efforts to increase its safety and strategic autonomy, but that will take between five and ten years. Unfortunately, Ukraine does not have so much time. A forced peace would allow Russia to take a breath and return to finish the work in three years. The statements of Trump’s envoys have committed great injustice by not recognizing that Ukraine is the attacked party and not admitting the terrible price paid for their independence. In Paris an opportunity opens to start correcting errors.