Ukraine, EU saves face: conference call with Trump and Zelensky on 13 August

Brussels – No debate on Ukraine without its president, nor an active role for Europe, which mobilises and eventually manages to carve out spaces of international prominence. The mid-August summit in Alaska between the presidents of Russia and the United States, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, produced a 12-star reaction of pride that led the EU to reshape the international agenda with an entirely new summit, by telephone, on Wednesday 13 August, between the tenant of the White House, the Ukrainian president, EU leaders and even the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who was previously snubbed and is now being considered. 

The extraordinary Foreign Ministers’ Summit, convened by the EU’s High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, is the direct consequence of a failure to take into account the European Union in its capacity as a Community institution. After all, the EU does not yet have a foreign policy of its own, and in Moscow and Washington (more in Washington, to be honest, given the Euro-Russian non-relationships), between institutional discourtesy and the cold shower of realpolitik, neither von der Leyen nor Kallas was consulted. 

The EU had to save face, and in the end it succeeded, with a hastily organised video conference that takes on at times the appearance of a summit of the EU’s existential crisis—in search of a strategy that avoids leaving it on the sidelines of world balances—at times the form of a frustration for a Europe desperate to show that first and foremost it exists. This is what drives Kallas, in an attempt to make a breakthrough that only partially succeeds. 

The EU managed to convince Trump that Zelensky should be listened to and involved, and that European demands should, in any case, be brought to the August summit. Hence the conference call on 13 August, with Trump, Zelensky, von der Leyen and above all Friedrich Merz, Germany’s chancellor and promoter of the initiative, who in any case explains who pulls the strings in Europe, if ever there was any need to do so. Somehow, however, the EU manages to save face, and that is enough for the EU in a summer crisis. 

The result is enhanced by Kallas’s announcement of new restrictive measures against the Kremlin. “We are working on more sanctions on Russia,” she says in her message entrusted to social media. Added to this is a commitment to “more military and financial support for Ukraine” along with a promise of support in the EU accession process. The EU, in short, shows that it exists and wants to be present. It seems little, but it is not.