DR. SANJA VUJAČIĆ IS A GEOPOLITICAL ANALYST AND COMMENTATOR FROM PARIS

According to American politician Ann Richards – if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. Ukraine is not at the negotiating table. That means it’s on the menu, ever since the Biden dynasty, which had a deal with Zelensky against Trump, was replaced in the White House by none other than the Trump dynasty – says Dr. Sanja Vujačić, geopolitical analyst and commentator, director of the SEE research program at the Paris-based IDII institute (http://idii.global/en/sanja-vujacic), who adds:

– Let us recall that the key goal of the war in Ukraine was not the independence of a theoretically independent Ukraine (Russian presence there had been crisscrossed by CIA and MI6 bases and their mercenaries), but rather its Euro-Atlantic integration in order to maintain Anglo-American dominance in Europe, which the Russians do not recognize on their own territory and in their immediate neighborhood. The backdrop to the decade-long conflict in eastern Ukraine was the ideological war between Atlanticism (the European classical left and right, and Biden’s progressives) and Eurasianism (Russian and American conservatives). With Trump’s victory in the American elections, it was the conservative option – that is, Russia – that won the ideological war. A dialogue between the conservatives Trump and Putin imposed itself. Russia’s ideological victory was preceded by its military successes: the annexation of Crimea and the present-day Ukrainian regions of the former Novorossiya – a component of the Russian Empire, which had organized the colonization of that territory by Christians of various nationalities, Ukrainians included – and this after it had pushed back the Ottoman Empire. The Russians achieved their latest military successes not against Ukraine, but against NATO, without whose strategic and military assistance, as well as without American and European financing, the Ukrainians would be unable to defend themselves. Over the three years of international conflict in Ukraine, Western oligarchic collectivism, which grew out of the merging of communist and capitalist oligarchs under Anglo-American protection, experienced its peak (the rallying of all allies behind Ukraine), its implosion (Atlanticism being called into question by Trump), and its restructuring with the coming to power of the Trump 2.0 administration, led by the Trump-Musk duo.

DIVISION OF INTERESTS

What could all this “give birth to” – can Trump really end the war? What did the meetings in Munich, Paris… show?

– The conservative victory in the United States is a historic counterweight to progressivism, which has “given birth to” a restructuring of Western oligarchic collectivism, which today relies just as much on the belief in the superiority of the intelligent and the wealthy as on the desire for all Americans to benefit from it. Of course, it is not intended that the American people obtain this promised benefit at the expense of the American oligarchy, but rather at the expense of other peoples and their oligarchies. That is why confusion reigns among European oligarchs. According to a Trendeo study, in 2024 France lost 19 more factories than it opened. Nothing like this had been seen since 2015. The trend is obviously continuing, since a further 20 factories closed in January 2025 alone. This is because the European political-media caste largely supported the Biden-Zelensky duo unreservedly, and today all that remains for it is to play the loser, in Munich or in Paris. While Europe was subjected for three full years to a media battering of untruths/half-truths that thus become truths (war propaganda), in the US the democratic, contradictory debate on war or peace in Ukraine never stopped. The will of the people, arising from the ballot box, was respected there. Which is not entirely the case in some European countries (France, Romania, etc.). That is why J. D. Vance’s “Munich slap” to the Europeans is entirely fitting, regarding the disrespect for election results and freedom of expression. Like the Ukrainians, the Europeans are not at the negotiating table, simply because they are the losers of the war in Ukraine. Unlike Biden, who in that war seized the European gas market from the Russians, thereby securing a market for expensive American shale gas – whose production had previously been encouraged by the Trump 1.0 administration – the Europeans have also lost access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth, which is mostly located in the 20% of the territory under Russian control; especially access to badly needed rare metals. In other words, the Trump-Putin negotiations on peace in Ukraine could be conducted according to the formula: “What is ours is ours, what is yours is negotiable” (Nikita Khrushchev, at the UN General Assembly, 13 October 1960).

That is why the Western European leaders loudly declared that there would be no agreement without Ukraine and the Union. As well as that the Americans now wanted to colonize them; although they had already done so back in 1945. They even claimed that a “new Yalta” was being prepared. Although, if it truly were a “new Yalta,” some “new Churchill” would also sit as an equal at the negotiating table. But he does not. So this is not a division of the world that differs from those that preceded it, except that the former great European powers will not take part in it. That is why the French president urgently summoned to Paris only Zelensky’s closest advisers on the Ukrainian catastrophe: at least a million dead and wounded, 4.2 million refugees, 152 billion in direct damage according to UN estimates. In other words, he invited only the leaders of the European states with a significant army, thereby himself applying Trump’s principle of marginalizing allies.

As for the war, it was clear from the outset that this was a proxy (proxy) war, which one American administration (the Democrats) waged in such a way as not to participate directly in military operations, but through the consenting Ukrainian authorities (Zelensky) engaged on the ground. By taking on the intermediary role, the Ukrainian authorities also took on the risk that some other American administration (Trump’s conservatives) would end the war, if that suited it. The Europeans took on the same risk by supporting that same American administration and its proxy.

Why has the Ukrainian war lasted so long? How did the EU find itself in a situation where it is ignored by Trump and Putin?

– Over a total of ten years, the war in Ukraine went on in order to exhaust Russia economically and militarily, to provoke domestic political unrest and the removal of Putin, whose will to power rivals that of the Anglo-Americans. As well as to allow the West to retain the mineral wealth of eastern Ukraine. However, it was Ukraine and the Union that became exhausted, while Russia additionally expanded its influence into Africa and the Middle East, to the detriment of the European powers. The peace negotiations conducted by the Europeans never took hold (the Minsk Agreements). They then supported Zelensky in his intention to bring Ukraine into NATO and the Union, contrary to the commitment to neutrality that Ukraine had assumed when it achieved independence, and knowing in advance that the Ukrainian president’s wishes were unrealizable in the foreseeable future. Because Russia did not want the Ukrainians and Europeans to bring hostile NATO troops up to its endless borders, so it launched the Russian special operation, which someone now needs to stop. And that is exactly what Trump is trying to do. He is trying to cut the story short. He has no more time; a clash with China awaits him. It is in his interest to try to pull Russia away from its Chinese rival. For its part, the Union had its chance, but proved incapable of maintaining peace or winning the war in Europe, with or without the US. That is why it is now ignored by both Trump and Putin.

THE SHADOW OF PALESTINE

What awaits us in the future, with or without Trump, with the EU’s own visions beyond US influence? Can the EU still have confidence in the NATO alliance?

– Three decades of disastrous European economic policies that fail to protect the national interests of the Union’s members, and a Union conceived as a luxury standards factory, followed only by itself since it has not developed its own “hammer” (a powerful military force and diplomacy) with which to impose them on others as well, will ultimately turn the whole of Europe into an attractive market for the surplus goods of industrial states’ production, and will completely suppress domestic production. Like the US, Russia or China, the Union can only place its trust in an alliance of European states resting on their own vision of the world. However, it is unlikely that today’s European leaders are capable of such alchemy. The fact that the NATO and EU problem does not lie in the material resources that Europeans allocate to defense (as Trump claims) is best shown by the figure according to which all Europeans together allocate 350 billion euros to defense, compared with 170 billion for the Russians. The Russians, with their budget, achieve their set goals and expand their influence in the world, while the Europeans, with a budget more than twice as large, are not even able to supply Ukraine with weapons. The same, ever-aging advisers to European leaders, after three years of denouncing “Putin’s madness,” have now also turned on Trump. Everyone except themselves is to blame for Europe’s failures, and it is all the more believable that, preoccupied with their own survival in power at any cost, they will hitch their wagons to the NATO train, regardless of where it leads. That is, even though it is known that Donald Trump is driving it toward the Middle East, which is the focus of his interests and which has inspired a new American civilizing mission: a self-satisfied messianism in the service of big business.

It will be interesting to watch how the European Catholic states manage to explain to their citizens and believers why, together with Trump and evangelical Christians, they envisage waiting for the Messiah – who therefore would not be Jesus Christ – on the former Palestinian territories “cleansed” of Palestinians. Indeed, Trump’s new Middle East policy is the policy of evangelical Christians (members of the Anglican, Reformed, Evangelical, Baptist, and other churches), who supported the creation of the Jewish state in Palestine even more than the Jewish community itself. They are convinced that, for the Messiah’s return to Earth, it is necessary for the Jews to possess the land God gave them (the land of Palestine); as well as that the Americans, just like the Israelis, are a “chosen” people. This is a possible stumbling block in the future development of Trump-Putin relations.