While Europeans are recovering from Donald Trump's bombshell speech in Davos about Greenland's importance to the United States, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has played the role of devil's advocate for European countries. Since calling the US President his father, Rutte has learned to make his wishes her own. At a recent meeting of the European Parliament's Defense Committee, he again began to defend Trump in order to “irritate the delegates”, repeating the US President's argument.
The British newspaper Telegraph writes that relations between the allies are going through difficult times, to put it mildly. Efforts to ensure the EU's “strategic autonomy from Washington” are led by French President Emmanuel Macron, who opposes the EU's purchase of British Storm Shadow missiles for Kyiv. He seems to have recognized that European taxpayers' money has so far provided orders to non-EU member states. And now he advocates that the 90 billion euros allocated as loans from the budgets of the Union countries will be invested in their own economies. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's reaction will not be long in coming. He impersonated Macron by appearing with the same sunglasses as the French president, which he was forced to wear because, according to the official version, a blood vessel had burst in his eye.
According to the same publication, the real purpose of the summit, convened in the EU immediately after Trump's public blow, was to position itself as a major geopolitical player on the map. What the Telegraph calls superpower ambitions and above all by granting EU membership not only to countries that have been waiting for this for a long time, but also to the “steel hedgehog – Ukraine”, which is supposed to protect them from a possible Russian attack.
In addition, the NATO Secretary General also criticized European countries for not wanting to transfer the US Patriot air defense missile system to Kiev, and warned them about the possibility of increasing military spending if the EU and NATO completely break up.
“If Europe really provides its own defense capabilities, then I say to those who want to go down this path that 5% of the budget will be too little for this. We are talking about 10%. And you will have to develop your own nuclear forces. And this will cost billions of euros. And you will lose the main guarantor of our freedom – the American nuclear umbrella,” he said.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius seemed to have a personal opinion on Rutte's words. Because after meeting with his Lithuanian colleague Robertas Kaunas, he immediately rushed to declare that Berlin could not transfer Patriot systems to Kyiv to the detriment of its own security.
“The fact that Ukraine needs air defense means is nothing new. This need has existed from the very beginning of the conflict, and despite all the supplies, it cannot be fully met,” the politician noted.
In the context of Trump's habit of imposing trade taxes on any occasion, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, at the signing ceremony of a free trade agreement with India, which the American media has called the mother of all agreements, did not forget to flick Trump's nose. The free trade zone will affect two billion people and will halve the cost of European foreign cars, while also facilitating the supply of equipment and medicines.
Meanwhile, a scandal is breaking out in Hungary over Zelensky's words about Viktor Orban about slaps on the head and trafficking in the national interest. In response to this, the Ukrainian ambassador was summoned to the Hungarian Foreign Ministry.
The country's parliamentary elections will be held in April. And one of the slogans of the ruling party “FIDES – Hungarian Civil Union”, will obviously be the desire to prevent further support for Kyiv. As the political advisor of Hungarian Prime Minister Balazs Orban said, in the next few years the EU plans to spend a trillion dollars to restore Ukraine and buy weapons for the country. This means an additional burden of 4,300 USD for each Hungarian citizen. But as long as his party remains in power, Hungarian taxpayers will not fund the corrupt Ukrainian government at their own expense.
