The London Ukraine summit, attended by 16 European leaders, culminated on Sunday evening (2 March 2025) in the announcement of a future peace plan . The summit agreed that Britain and France will draw up a plan to end the conflict. Britain and France intend to propose a one-month ceasefire. The summit also discussed increasing support for Ukraine, strengthening Ukraine’s position, sending troops to Ukraine and rearming Europe.
There have been widespread fears in Europe that Donald Trump’s return to power in the United States is a sign of the disintegration of the “West”. The shocking events at the White House on Friday (28 February) caused outright panic. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called a summit in London the next day, and the meeting was held immediately.
Canada and Turkey were present, as were 14 European NATO countries. The European Council, the European Commission and NATO were also represented. About half of the European member states of the EU and NATO seem not to have been invited. Starmer used the expression “coalition of the willing” – the invitation was sent to apparently important or ideologically particularly like-minded countries.
The meeting discussed a ceasefire and the development of a peace plan, but its immediate contribution was an expression of support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his line. At the London summit, the leaders agreed to continue and possibly increase military assistance, including after a possible ceasefire agreement, to make Ukraine strong and able to prevent new attacks from Russia.
Other countries attending the meeting are also planning to increase their defence budgets, after Starmer announced last week that the UK would raise military spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, with a target of 3% soon after. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared after the London meeting that “we urgently need to rearm Europe”. And she added that “to do that I will present a comprehensive plan for rearming Europe on 6 March, when we have the European Council”.
The Economist was quick to add that if Europe cannot rely on America, it must have its own heavy aircraft, logistics and surveillance systems, and the entire military infrastructure. Britain and France must find a way to use their nuclear weapons to protect Europe. Defence spending must rise to 4-5% of GDP, “which was normal during the Cold War”. What is unclear, however, is how all this is going to be implemented in practice, when NATO is no longer trusted and Britain is no longer in the EU.
The media has been bursting with speculation about whether the Friday night altercation at the White House on 28 February was a planned event and, if so, what its purpose was. More importantly, the undiplomatic and panic-inducing actions of President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance stemmed from a contradiction between different narratives about Ukraine. Zelenskyy personifies the view that Ukraine, which represents democracy and freedom, is fighting a heroic battle against an aggressor who is waging war on Western values and the rules-based international system. The narrative of Trump and the MAGA movement about Ukraine is not clear, but Trump has doubted Ukraine’s democracy and suggested that NATO and Ukraine share responsibility for the war.
Trump’s real point may be about national selfishness (the war has become costly for the United States and America’s priorities lie elsewhere, especially in the struggle against China) and Trump’s way of presenting his views may be reckless and crude. However, his doubts and claims may still have some merit. For example, in its 2023 report, V-Dem classified Ukraine as (not a democracy, but) an electoral autocracy. In 2024, elections were postponed due to martial law and also on the grounds that “we need unity”. More than a dozen political parties have been banned in Ukraine, much of the media is under state control, and the number of political prisoners has increased.
Furthermore, the evidence suggests that the causes of the conflict have all along been essentially related to NATO expansion and Ukraine’s language policy. For example, the March 2022 Istanbul Memorandum of Understanding recorded Russia’s key goals, namely preventing NATO expansion and improving the status of the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine. The key NATO countries opposed the agreement made on this basis.
On the other hand, we can also look at the matter from a perspective that takes a more critical distance from Trump’s MAGA ideology. For example, from a social democratic (in the original rather than the prevailing neoliberal sense of the word) perspective, the problem has always been the double standards that have prevailed in the West. The “West” has repeatedly deviated from its own ideals (see this):
“European states behaved disgracefully towards their colonies and their inhabitants during the wars of independence, while the United States, during the Cold War, readily supported brutal dictatorships to counter the USSR, from overthrowing Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran to Salvador Allende in Chile. The post-Cold War era was no better, as demonstrated by the disastrous invasion of Iraq. […] The United States, once a champion of multilateralism, did not wait for Trump to undermine global institutions. Washington had long been criticising and defunding the United Nations, UNESCO, and the World Trade Organization. It refused to ratify the Statute of the International Criminal Court, rejected the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, and declined to support the Kyoto Protocol – setting back global efforts to combat climate change by at least twenty-five years. The ‘America First’ doctrine predates Trump.”
The Trump administration has radicalized decades of practice, but in doing so, it has produced a significant qualitative change. Under Trump, the United States has broken with the legacy of the Enlightenment and has practically abandoned the “rules-based international system” that it previously claimed to represent and lead, but which it often did not follow in practice. From this perspective, the gradually expanding conflict with Russia and China can also be interpreted as a process in which others first learn to respond to US self-regarding unilateralism by responding in kind, and then, as the process deepens, the US adopts unilateralism and selfishness as its official doctrine.
The group of like-minded leaders convened in London on 2 March 2025 want to continue to hold on to the dichotomous worldview that prevailed in the West, in which the neoliberal West represents goodness, Ukraine and Zelenskyy are heroes, and Russia represents expansionist evil that can only be countered with force. Although the ceasefire and talk of a peace process may be steps in the right direction, the main focus of the meeting seemed to be more on preparing for war. There was also talk in London of sending troops to Ukraine.
How is this grouping committed to the peace process and security in Ukraine? Starmer said there are plans to form a “coalition of the willing” to implement a possible peace deal. According to Starmer, the UK is ready to support this with troops and aircraft, along with others.
The details of the role of the troops are still unclear, but it seems that the discussions emphasized securing the peace and ensuring Ukraine’s sovereignty. Von der Leyen stressed that borders cannot be changed by force, which could indicate a peacekeeping operation, but the same statement can also be interpreted differently. It could also mean continuing the war until Russia is forced to give up the territories it has captured. If the war must continue until Ukraine has regained its territory, then Ukraine will need even stronger military support – whether in the form of weapons, funding, or possibly even troops.
The problem is not only the simplistic dichotomous narrative presented by the London grouping and its practical consequences but also the fact that sending troops from NATO countries to Ukraine during the war would mean expanding the war into a confrontation between Russia and NATO (or at least the “coalition of the willing”).
The idea of mobilizing troops to secure peace is better but practically unfeasible. Likely, this could only be done against Russia’s will. Without Russia’s approval, sending NATO troops to Ukraine could easily be interpreted as an act of aggression, as it directly conflicts with Russia’s main objective. A functioning peace process requires impartial mediators and peacekeepers who are as much outsiders to the conflict as possible.
The group that gathered in London should take the ideals it professes more seriously. If the goal is to strengthen common multilateral institutions, then the UN and the OSCE should be placed at the centre of the peace process. They should play a central role in both the peace process and peacekeeping. Peacekeeping forces must come from outside NATO. In negotiations, all issues must be on the table until everything is agreed. The model of temporal international administration could be utilized in regional issues. The central goal of the OSCE and the UN is negotiated and supervised disarmament, not rearmament.
No process will progress without dialogue, in which each party is prepared to listen to the other. Dialogue includes making compromises, understanding nuances and, in the best case, learning to tell better stories about oneself and others.
Heikki Patomäki
