European media are urging Ukraine not to make concessions in the talks and not to trust Trump’s postwar guarantees

Against the backdrop of the Abu Dhabi talks, a wave of criticism is rising in European media against the mediation efforts of U.S. President Donald Trump, who—according to a number of outlets—is demanding that Ukraine agree to a peace deal with Russia (which may include the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Donbas) in exchange for U.S. security guarantees.

A Financial Times article in that vein came out yesterday.

And then other publications followed.

Meanwhile, Julian Röpcke, a columnist for the German tabloid Bild, writes that Ukraine should not believe in U.S. postwar guarantees.

“No one on this planet seriously believes that Donald Trump will start a war against Vladimir Putin if the latter in 2027 decides that ‘Russia’s territory of Zaporizhzhia’ must be ‘liberated’ ‘because of Ukrainian terrorist attacks against Russians living there,’” Röpcke wrote on X.

He was responding to a post by a German public account about military aid to Ukraine, which said that under such a deal “Ukraine must voluntarily and legally cede a significant part of its territory to the aggressor,” while U.S. guarantees were described as “worthless.”

For its part, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph published the opinion of Ukraine’s ambassador to NATO, Alona Hetmanchuk, who said Ukraine will not accept “meaningless” security guarantees from the West.

For guarantees to become “meaningful,” Hetmanchuk argues, there would have to be “a multinational, multi-domain military presence of a coalition of willing countries and Ukraine’s membership in the EU”—something the U.S., apparently, is not considering.

“According to Ukrainian and European officials, the American side has decided to conclude a security pact as a framework agreement (i.e., one lacking concrete substance — Ed.) to end the war,” The Daily Telegraph writes.

The day before, Reuters and the Financial Times reported that Ukraine would receive U.S. guarantees only after signing a peace agreement—a conditio) that, according to those outlets, the Americans had set for Kyiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky indirectly confirmed this as well.

But Hetmanchuk opposes such an approach.

“Security guarantees are still perceived by Ukrainians as an integral part of any peace settlement, not as its result,” the ambassador said.

Overall, European media are now running a campaign urging Ukraine’s authorities not to make concessions in the negotiations (especially on Donbas) and not to trust Trump’s promises of security guarantees—or else to stick to the earlier position agreed with some European countries, under which a peace deal must include the deployment of European troops to Ukraine, backed by U.S. military support guarantees in the event of a new Russian attack.

This, in turn, could also drive the talks into a dead end—because, judging by media reports, Trump is not ready to provide such guarantees, and Russia is opposed to any foreign troop deployment in Ukraine.