Europe: Ain't Got No Land for Fake Peace
In one voice....That is a surprise!
Deadlines and deliberations.
Velocity and vetoes.
Europe and speed?
It was never a marriage meant to last. Hell, it was never even meant to happen. On one side, the continent that can turn a committee meeting into a season-long drama. On the other, the ticking clock of a war that doesn’t pause for parliamentary procedure.
And then came the date. A quiet line on a press release from Switzerland’s Ministry of Defence. Buried in diplomatic language, but impossible to miss: the Pentagon had told Bern their five Patriot missile batteries — paid for, promised, expected — were being pushed down the queue.
17th July 2025.
For the world’s second slowest bureaucracy, that was record-breaking speed. On July 4th, Pentagon’s No. 3 and No. 1 Elbridge Colby and Pete Hegseth slammed the brakes on Ukraine aid. Within hours, Chancellor Merz was on the phone to Trump, offering to buy weapons for Ukraine. By July 11th, Trump called back — deal in principle. Merz agreed. Six days later, Switzerland learned its Patriots weren’t coming anytime soon.
Count forward. From July 17th to today — almost a month. In that same window, the Trump administration dangled a $10 billion weapons sale to Europe. What, when, how? None of it matters if you’re still talking in circles, pooling the money, and debating the shopping list.
The smart play was obvious: pay in full on July 17th, send German defence minister Boris Pistorius to hand-deliver the list to Marco Rubio before the clock closed the following week. Load it with long-range strike weapons. If that had happened, Putin wouldn’t be entertaining ceasefire whispers with Steve Witkoff — he’d be plotting contingency trips to Beijing instead of meeting real estate amateurs.
But that wish never materialized. Europe missed the moment — or failed to see it for what it was. They didn’t grasp how critical it was to lock in the American position, one that had already been drifting toward the Kremlin for four months. If they couldn’t see the urgency of sealing the vault, then they were never going to move fast enough to stop the slide into Putin/Witkoff’s four-in-one ceasefire trap.
And yet, to my surprise, Europe finally moved. Yesterday evening, they forced themselves between Ukraine and the United States.
The announcements landed in two waves.
First came the heavyweights. On Sunday, the EU’s top table — Macron, Meloni, Merz, Tusk, Starmer, von der Leyen, and Stubb — issued a statement with one unambiguous line: The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine.
They spelled it out: international borders are not negotiable, and any talks must start from the current line of contact — not from whatever Moscow thinks it can take.
Then, the second wave. The Nordic-Baltic Eight lined up behind the same message, word for word.
We share the conviction that a diplomatic solution must safeguard the vital security interests of both Ukraine and Europe. These interests include robust and credible security guarantees that enable Ukraine to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity. We reaffirm the principle that international borders must not be changed by force.
Negotiations can only take place in context of a ceasefire. President Zelenskyy has stated clearly that Ukraine is ready for peace talks in full respect of its sovereignty.
The people of Ukraine must have the freedom to decide their future. The path to peace cannot be charted without Ukraine’s voice. No decisions on Ukraine without Ukraine, and no decisions on Europe without Europe.
The Nordic–Baltic Eight will remain at Ukraine’s side, united in purpose and resolute in defence of our security.
It was a statement that left little room for ambiguity. Europe — at least in that moment — was saying: we are together, and we are not ready to trade land for peace.
Almost as if they got together and said in one voice that we have finally learned the lesson of 1938.
Back then, we ceded the Sudetenland—a region bolstered by the most formidable border fortifications in Czechoslovakia—to Hitler in the name of appeasement. The mountainous terrain and reinforced defenses had made it arguably the most defensible frontier in all of Europe. We gave it away and we paid for it with millions of lives. We are not going to repeat that painful mistake again.
By Sunday night, the line was no longer blurred. Chancellor Merz stepped up to a podium and stripped away any diplomatic fog:
We cannot accept that European security continues to be threatened by Russia. Therefore, there can be no peace that rewards Russia's aggressive actions. This is our message as Europeans, and I am grateful for the close dialogue on this with the USA.
The slow backpedal from the Witkoff mess has landed in J.D. Vance’s lap. Why him? Hard to say. But GOP damage control isn’t like anyone else’s. It’s not spin so much as a doctrine: nothing ever goes wrong, because it was always going right.
Vance’s line to Europe was simple: you can buy weapons from the United States, but Washington won’t fund the war. That’s the MAGA twist — it’s your bill to pay. He said that when he was in the United Kingdom, during a meeting with the British Foreign Secretary David Lammy and national security advisors from Europe.
Then he repeated the same during a August 10 Fox News interview: no direct U.S. funding for Ukraine’s military, but Europe is welcome to purchase arms for Kyiv or its own defense.
If Putin believes that’s true, there’s no way he signs any deal. The moment the White House tells him he can’t dictate what goes inside Ukraine post-ceasefire, the odds of him ending the war collapse. At that point, ceasefire talks just become another tool to stall sanctions and buy time on the battlefield.
What should Europe do now?
As of Monday, August 11th, 2025, Europe has told Washington it will not accept any sell land to buy peace deal.
Vance tried to soften that blow by offering arms sales on a “your choice” basis. The cleaner move would be to cancel the Putin meeting altogether — but the mess may be too big to sweep away now.
So the meeting looks highly likely to go through. The best option on Europe’s table right now would be close the weapons deal with the United States before the meeting.
Pay now. Send the list — whatever you can. Take delivery later if you must, but seal the deal. Every day you wait, you invite headaches, and the Trump team has no shortage of people eager to hand them out.
The odds of anything good coming out of a Trump–Putin meeting are scraping zero. This is a global waste of time — a soup cooked in Witkoff’s kitchen and ladled out by the GOP’s brand of politics.
I still have a sliver of hope. Vance’s latest signal edges us toward the safety zone. But hope won’t buy weapons. And it won’t keep Putin from reading delay as weakness.
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In a weird kind of way, Russia is now in a stage of siege. The oil embargo has some teeth and Russian oil refineries and depots continue to burn. Russian railway networks and Aeroflot are disrupted and the military/industrial complex are taking hits. Crimea is progressively becoming more isolated - military families have been evacuated.
All of the damage takes millions of roubles to repair at a time where Russia is ripping through its sovereign wealth fund like a drunken sailor in Portsmouth on pay night and many of the equipments needed for repairs are embargoed.
Russian aircraft have been moved east where they are safer from Ukrainian attack.
Ukrainian hackers have junked at least two vital Russian computer networks. They may well be inside others - their excellent battlefield intel suggests this (although the Ukrainians point to other intel sources).
Under these circumstances, any temporary ceasefire is only an opportunity for Russia to regroup and repair.
Thanks again Shankar for providing the news we get from nowhere else. This would be a good one for all European policy makers to see ASAP.