Europeans Seek Pathway to Mend U.S.-Ukraine Rift

Hey, friends. For those of you who are new here, I read the top story in the New York Times every morning so that you don’t have to. If you were forwarded this, you can subscribe here. I’m also doing a five-minute video version of this, each morning at 9 a.m. if you’d like to follow me on LinkedIn (you can always watch the recording later).

You know it’s bad when a Frenchman has to work on a Sunday (or…Dimanche?):

That’s right. For those of us who were here on Saturday, we covered the blowup in the Oval Office between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky(with an optional extra ‘y’ on the end, it seems, if you want to translate it the way he does — it’s easier than writing “Зеленський”, either way. More on the spelling confusion around Ukrainian names here).

Now on Monday, we’re covering attempts to patch it up. Zelensky met with European leaders in London this weekend at a summit that was well-received by Brits and Europeans alike. Starmer is assembling a “coalition of the willing” to develop a plan to end the war which they “hope will win the backing of a skeptical President Trump.”

Starmer, you’ll recall, went to Washington last Thursday and had a slightly more successful meeting with President Trump, hand-delivering an invitation from King Charles. But soft, what light from yonder window breaks?

I feel like this guy will just invite anyone over. The visit has a symbolic resonance, evidently. I wonder what the heck all this is about. What’s the goal? The article quotes Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst with the political risk consulting firm Eurasia Group, whose European press team is yet to update their press page this morning with a clip from the New York Times, which tells me they are probably on a union contract. Mr. Rahman, meanwhile, could not be more of an overachiever. Here’s his quote:

That, the story reports, “will require European countries to shoulder a much heavier burden in the continent’s defense. Mr. Starmer pushed leaders to follow Britain in bolstering military spending,” and himself loaned Ukraine $4.8 billion this weekend to buy more than 5,000 advanced air defense missiles.

Most importantly (I was born in Britain, and Brexit was a horrorshow), it’s nice to see Keir Starmer leading for Britain on the world stage.

For Mr. Starmer, “the crisis is an opportunity to draw closer to Europe. He has long wanted to do that on the trade front but has approached it gingerly because of the political sensitivities at home. The Labour Party does not want to lose its core working-class voters, many of whom favored Brexit, to the anti-immigration party, Reform U.K., led by Nigel Farage.”

Farage, incidentally, was a Nazi at his private school as a boy.

The interesting thing is that “increasing military spending is popular with Reform voters. Standing behind Ukraine and against Russian aggression also puts Mr. Farage, with his history of sympathy for Mr. Putin, in a tricky position,” the story reports, and I’m delighted to hear it.

The shock over “Mr. Trump’s statements about Russia and Ukraine has a uniting factor,” Diplomats said. In other words, by being such an evident patsy for Vladimir Putin recently, Mr. Trump appears to be steeling more and more European and particularly British voters against him.

Which is an amazing quote. I do not accept that David Hasselhoff is a bad actor, although phrasing it like that still allows you to accept the possibility that it could be true, regardless. Thanks for reading the news with me today!

Matt Davis lives in New York with his wife and kid.