Donald Trump would like to announce peace in Ukraine for Christmas, and faced with the possibility that the American president will hastily give in to Russian demands, his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky and his European allies are trying to soften these concessions. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, at the start of two days of meetings, received this Sunday in Berlin the emissaries of Zelensky and Trump: his chief negotiator, Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The guarantees given to the Ukrainians that Russia will no longer attack after a hypothetical ceasefire and the possible territorial renunciations by kyiv are at the center of the negotiations.
Zelensky, in a conversation with journalists before landing in Berlin, indicated that instead of asking to join NATO, he would be ready to accept protection from his allies equivalent to Article 5 of the Atlantic Alliance. Article 5 establishes that an attack against one member of the organization must be considered an attack against all and requires that they provide assistance in this case. The Ukrainian president also showed openness to the creation of a demilitarized zone in the eastern region of Donbass, most of which is occupied by Russia. The underlying argument: there will only be territorial concessions if there are security guarantees from Europe and the United States. That is to say, military protection that prevents Russia from invading Ukraine again as it did in 2014 and 2022.
These are “decisive days”, we hear in European capitals, aware of the danger that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin reach an agreement behind the backs of Ukraine and Europe. The idea is that Zelensky’s internal problems, Russia’s strength on the battlefield, Trump’s rush to announce a deal, his campaign against the EU and his affinity for Putin leave little room and force action to limit the damage. This was Merz’s objective in summoning Zelensky, his European colleagues and the American emissaries.
Merz is trying to occupy, by organizing the Berlin summit, a European leadership role which had been assumed in the past by French President Emmanuel Macron, today in the home stretch of his mandate and weakened. The chancellor, in office since last May, took charge of the European rearmament plan in the face of Trump’s hostility and the Russian threat and opened the door to the reintroduction of compulsory military service.
In a speech in Munich on Saturday, he compared Putin’s territorial ambitions to those of Adolf Hitler during the conquest of the German-speaking region of Czechoslovakia in 1938, without Western powers reacting. In Munich itself, the French and British accepted Hitler’s conquests. It was the prologue to World War II. In Berlin, the debate will largely revolve around the territorial concessions that Russia, and perhaps the United States, are demanding from Ukraine. “If Ukraine falls,” Merz warned, “it won’t stop there.”
The first day of talks, Sunday, was a round trip between the Adlon Hotel, in the center of the city, and the headquarters of the federal chancellery, where in the afternoon Merz received emissaries from Zelensky and Trump. The official agenda provides for a strictly European summit on Monday, in which Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Italian Giorgia Meloni will participate, among others. The Berlin meeting comes on the eve of a summit at which the EU must decide on Thursday whether or not it will use frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine. And this comes after three weeks of discussions around the 28-point plan for Ukraine prepared by Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s right-hand man.
The presence in Berlin of Witkoff, Trump’s closest advisor to Putin, and his son-in-law Kushner, is seen in Germany as a sign that the negotiations are serious. The White House had suggested it would not send anyone to the meeting if it did not think results could be achieved. Both believe they have negotiating skills after forging the ceasefire in Gaza. But Witkoff, a New York businessman with no diplomatic experience, arouses deep mistrust among Europeans and in kyiv for having adopted, at key moments of the negotiation, the Kremlin’s positions. His initial plan, drawn up with the Kremlin and then watered down, imposed drastic territorial concessions on Ukraine and severe limits on its ability to defend itself in the future, as well as an amnesty for crimes committed during the war.
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