The Day Europe Told Trump to Shove It

Macron Rejects the Surrender of Crimea, Ukraine Launches Its First AWACS, and America’s Word Becomes Worthless

On April 22, 2025, sometime during the day, an unusual aircraft began circling above Lviv—one of Ukraine’s largest western cities, not far from the Polish border. The flight path was erratic, looping repeatedly. Open-source flight trackers soon identified the aircraft: a Sweden-made Saab 340 AEW&C, an airborne early warning and control (AWACS) platform. The same type Sweden had pledged to deliver to Ukraine—two units, publicly promised.

That day, Ukraine was test-flying its first AWACS in active skies.

Ukrainian AWACS over Lviv

The timing was no coincidence. Ever since Donald Trump cut off U.S. intelligence support in early March, pressure had been mounting on NATO allies to step up. Eyes turned to Sweden—pointedly. Where were the aircraft? Stockholm responded with calm deflection: there was no delay on their end. Ukraine had simply requested additional modifications before the systems would be formally handed over.

Reports suggest that even the incoming F-16s are undergoing similar adjustments—modifications designed, if one had to guess, to reduce the American backstab potential built into legacy integrations.

The status of the second Swedish AWACS remains unclear. But if one unit is already in the sky, Ukraine must have a trained crew operational. And if one crew is ready, odds are that a second—and possibly a third—team is either ready or close. Which raises a fair question: Is the second aircraft already here—just not flying?

Extremely likely.

This is a massive development for Ukraine. No, it won’t close every gap left by the U.S. intelligence withdrawal—but it will blunt the pain significantly. Since March, French AWACS aircraft, flanked by Rafale jets, have been patrolling Ukrainian airspace. Now, with Ukraine operating its own airborne early warning system, Europe finally has a semi-independent, integrated surveillance net over Ukraine.

The ability to track everything flying toward Ukraine—drones, cruise missiles, low-flying aircraft—has, until now, leaned heavily on the United States. Not completely; NATO assets filled part of the gap. But the core dependency was American. That equation just shifted. U.S. data remains valuable. But for one of the most critical intelligence domains, the needle just moved toward Europe.

And there’s a strategic side effect: as Ukraine begins to decouple from real-time U.S. intelligence feeds, Washington will start knowing less about what Ukraine is doing as it happens. That changes the texture of diplomacy. The bite of a U.S. intel cutoff still hurts—but it hurts far less in April than it did in March. And if Europe keeps moving, keeps reinforcing, that bite force can be brought down even further in May.

Keep going until the pain drops by 80%. That’s the new mission.

I’m not entirely sure whether President Emmanuel Macron, who probably has the clearest view of Ukraine’s slow decoupling from U.S. dependency, decided to drop his restraint because of that shift—or because he saw the situation spinning out of control. Maybe both. But what’s clear is this: he forcefully broke ranks and publicly backed President Zelensky, right after Trump tried to corner Ukraine into surrendering Crimea to Vladimir Putin.

Maybe Macron felt the clock ticking on a geopolitical bomb. Maybe he just had enough.

Either way, he made it unmistakably clear: Zelensky will not be signing any ceasefire proposal under pressure. Macron dressed it up with diplomatic rationale—layered explanations about principles and conditions—but none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was this: Macron, in full public view, rejected the American surrender plan.

That single act relieved the pressure on Zelensky and lobbed the political grenade right back into the laps of Trump’s advisors.

When reporters asked White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt whether Trump had in fact pushed Ukraine to surrender Crimea, she flat-out denied it: “President Trump is not asking Ukraine to recognize Crimea [as Russian]. Nobody has asked them to do that.”

I honestly don’t know whether to laugh or cry. The entire world saw what happened. Macron wouldn’t have gone public unless something was deeply wrong. And the fact that he did—loud, clear, and without hedging—tells you everything.

Even Zelensky himself confirmed it.

On April 23rd, he wrote—

“Emotions have run high today. But it is good that 5 countries met to bring peace closer. Ukraine, the USA, the UK, France and Germany. The sides expressed their views and respectfully received each other’s positions. It’s important that each side was not just a participant but contributed meaningfully. The American side shared its vision. Ukraine and other Europeans presented their inputs. And we hope that it is exactly such joint work that will lead to lasting peace. We are grateful to partners. Ukraine will always act in accordance with its Constitution and we are absolutely sure that our partners in particular the USA will act in line with its strong decisions,” and then attached the Crimea declaration made by the Trump administration on July 25th, 2018.

Just absolute madness.

Nothing this administration says can be trusted. Not their promises, not their policies, not even their written commitments. They won’t honor agreements. They won’t stand by their word. And when cornered, they’ll pretend it never happened.

But even in this chaos, two things landed hard this week:

1. Europe rejected America’s surrender plan. Macron said no. Zelensky stood firm. And the attempt to hand Crimea to Putin was shoved back across the table.

2. Ukraine’s first AWACS aircraft is in the sky. Visually confirmed. Tracked. Real.

That was the first requirement I laid out the moment U.S. intelligence support was cut: Get Ukraine airborne early warning aircrafts. Fast. We now have one bird flying. Two would be even better. And if Europe can find two more in the coming months?

That’ll do.

Let Trump rot in his contradictions. The rest of us have work to do.