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European leaders on Thursday said they would stand by Ukraine and spend more on defence in a world upended by Donald Trump’s reversal of U.S. policies.
As leaders meet, at least 5 killed in Ukraine within previous 24 hours in Russian attacksThomson Reuters
· Posted: Mar 06, 2025 8:57 AM EST | Last Updated: 3 hours ago
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speak to the media at the outset of a European Union leaders special summit to discuss Ukraine and European defence in Brussels on Thursday. (Stephanie Lecocq/Reuters)European leaders on Thursday said they would stand by Ukraine and spend more on defence in a world upended by Donald Trump’s reversal of U.S. policies.
Leaders of the European Union’s 27 countries were joined by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a summit in Brussels.
They were expected to agree to ramp up defence spending and reaffirm support for Ukraine at a summit on Thursday, after Donald Trump’s suspension of military aid to Kyiv fuelled concerns the EU can no longer rely on U.S. protection. But it is unclear whether the proposal will be endorsed by all of the leaders, due to a veto threat from Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who has kept friendly ties to the Kremlin and endorsed Trump’s approach on Ukraine.
While the summit will offer words of support and plan for an increase in defence spending, Europe is not expected to be able to fully replace suspended U.S. aid. Washington provided more than 40 per cent of military aid to Ukraine last year, according to NATO, some of which Europe could not easily provide.
“Europe as a whole is truly capable of winning any military, financial, economic confrontation with Russia — we are simply stronger,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.
A view shows damaged vehicles at the site of a hotel building hit by a Russian missile strike in Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine on Wednesday. (Serhii Lysak/Telegram/Reuters)They met as the war continues to grind on, early into its fourth year since Vladimir Putin made the decision to invade in February 2022. A Russian missile late Wednesday struck a hotel in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih — Zelenskyy’s hometown — killing four people and injuring 32.
In the northeastern city of Sumy, Russian drones struck a postal depot and started a large fire, killing one person and burning down the facility along with more than 2,500 parcels.
Macron open to talks on nuclear protectionThe EU meeting takes place against a backdrop of dramatic defence policy decisions and a coalescing belief that Europe cannot rely on the U.S. to come to its aid.
“I want to believe that the United States will stand by us. But we have to be ready if that is not the case,” President Emmanuel Macron said in an address to France on the eve of the summit.
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The U.S. has cut Ukraine off from crucial and potentially life-saving intelligence sharing in the war against Russia’s full-scale invasion, with the Trump administration suggesting it could be reinstated if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy complies with U.S. efforts to end the conflict.
In a sign of the gravity of the moment, Macron said France is open to discussing extending the protection offered by its nuclear arsenal to its European partners. He stressed that Russia had become a threat for all of Europe.
“Faced with this world of danger, remaining a spectator would be madness,” Macron said.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called Macron’s speech “highly confrontational” and that “one can conclude that France is thinking more about war, about continuing the war.”
The European Commission — the EU’s executive body — also unveiled proposals that it said could mobilize up to 800 billion euros ($1.24 trillion Cdn) for European defence, including a plan to borrow up to 150 billion euros ($232 billion Cdn) to lend to EU governments.
“It gives more fiscal space to member states for military expenditure, and it gives the possibility for joint procurement on a European level,” Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday. “And also very importantly, it also benefits Ukraine.”
Trump has said Europe must take more responsibility for its security and previously suggested the U.S. would not protect a NATO ally that did not spend enough on defence.
Britain announced a modest increase in defence spending last week, and on Thursday said it had struck a deal with a defence tech company to allow Ukrainian armed forces to use more advanced attack drones in the Black Sea. Earlier this week, the parties aiming to form Germany’s next government coalition agreed to loosen borrowing limits to allow billions of euros of extra defence spending.
Russia praises comments by U.S. secretary of stateTrump and JD Vance engaged in a protracted, public dispute in the Oval Office with Zelenskyy on Feb. 28. The U.S. decision to pull away from staunch support for Ukraine, to a more conciliatory stance toward Moscow has deeply alarmed Europeans who see Russia as the biggest threat to their security.
“It’s been very clear from the beginning that President Trump views this as a protracted, stalemated conflict,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News in an interview on Wednesday.
“And frankly, it’s a proxy war between nuclear powers — the United States, helping Ukraine, and Russia — and it needs to come to an end.”
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Peskov said Thursday that Rubio’s comments were “absolutely in line with the position that our president and foreign minister have repeatedly expressed.”
Separately, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Moscow would regard any European peacekeepers deployed to Ukraine as the official involvement of NATO forces in the war against Russia.
Possible opposition from Hungary, SlovakiaSeveral European leaders have floated the idea of sending a European peacekeeping contingent to Ukraine after the two sides achieve some sort of ceasefire deal.
On Ukraine, almost all EU leaders are keen to reassure Zelenskyy of their support.
But EU members have so far not been able to agree on a proposal by foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas to put a figure on the military aid they will pledge to Ukraine this year.
A police officer walks at the site of a warehouse hit by a Russian drone strike, in Sumy, Ukraine early Thursday. (National Police of Ukraine/Reuters)In a letter to European Council President Antonio Costa dated Saturday, Orban said there were “strategic differences in our approach to Ukraine that cannot be bridged.”
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who has also rejected military aid to Ukraine, repeated that he wanted a mention of reopening Russian gas transit through Ukraine — a major route of energy for Slovakia that Kyiv stopped this year — as part of summit conclusions.
With files from CBC News
