French President Emmanuel Macron with Donald Trump in the White House, Washington, D.C., February 24, 2025 (Jim Watson/AFP)
Ukraine War, Day 1,098: Macron Warns Trump Against “Surrender” Over Russia’s Invasion
EA-Times Radio VideoCast: Trump Ditches Ukraine — Can Europe Step Up?
EA’s David Dunn joined RTE Radio 1’s Claire Byrne on Tuesday to evaluate French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to the White House, hoping to pull Donald Trump back from abandonment of Ukrainian and European security to Russia and his friend Vladimir Putin.
The other guest is Trumpist spokesperson Greg Swenson.
It was important for Macron to be in the room to offer those correctives to the mistruths that Trump has got into his head about the proportion of money spent on Ukraine.
And it was also important to stress that Europe has a meaningful contribution in this.
Macron was making the point that this cannot be the deal made over the heads of the Europeans and the Ukrainians.
David also points out that it is not Trump’s strength, but his “weakness” bringing Kyiv and the world to this point: “The Americans are going back on the commitment they made to Ukraine, giving it the opportunity to make progress in weakening Russia and possibly getting back their territory.”
He emphasizes the necessity of “peace with security” but the “concessions made by the Trump Administration…are all caving in”.
And he takes apart the excuses and diversions of Swenson, justifying Trump’s embrace of Putin:
If you won’t call out the aggressor, if you already are giving away the shops in the concessions you are making — no NATO membership for Ukraine, no American troops on the ground — what that shows is rather than being this great deterrent force, you are signalling weakness.
So this may not even come to “peace”. What the Russians sense is if they hold out, they can gain more territory and more in this deal because the Americans are showing first and foremost their desire for grubby deals rather than putting principle or values or even the security of Europe as the priority.
