Can Europe defend Ukraine without the US?
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Al Jazeera Podcasts. Today, Europe prepares to go at it alone on Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelensky arrived at Downing Street as a president under pressure, bruised by his encounter with Donald Trump. A plan takes shape to help Ukraine avoid defeat and keep the peace with or without U.S. support. I'm Kevin Hurtin, and this is The Take.

European leaders, the prime minister of the UK, and even the king all gathered in London Sunday to work out a strategy for Ukraine. Europe must do the heavy lifting. But to support peace in our continent and to succeed, this effort must have strong U.S. backing.

It was planned weeks ago, but the timing couldn't be better following an extremely tense exchange at the White House between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. President Donald Trump. It's still making headlines. Your country is in big trouble. Wait a minute. No, no. You've done a lot of talking. Your country is in big trouble. I know. You're not winning. You're not winning this. You have a damn good chance of coming out okay because of us. Mr. President, we are staying.

Never seen anything like it in my life. Never heard of anything like it in my life. It is, there may be one incident somewhere in diplomatic history where this happened. It was extraordinary. Extraordinary. This now leaves Europe and the UK scrambling to pick up the pieces and to work out an entirely new defense policy on the fly.

I'm Alex Katopoulos. I'm defense editor for Al Jazeera English, and I live here and work here in Doha.

All right. So after Zelensky's incredibly frosty reception in Washington, he immediately flies to London and he gets a bit of a king's welcome. Well, actually, literally a king's welcome because the king was there, along with European heads of state from all over. Just to start us off, can you describe this meeting in London? Who was there and what was discussed? Well,

Many Europeans were there, but not all of them were there. Quite interesting to see. There were some omissions. For instance, the heads of state from

Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia weren't there, which are frontline states, obviously very worried about any possible coercion or military action from Russia. Turkey was there, which is not European, again, very interesting because Turkey is now a major arms manufacturer, especially important for when you want to try and produce vast amounts of artillery ammunition. And this was

a solidarity thing for most of the Europeans where they all gathered together to talk about, you know, to Zelensky and reassure him that the European way was not what has now become the American way. And they used to be in lockstep together. And now, unfortunately, they are not.

So this is something that I think Zelensky needed to hear and the Europeans needed to say. It's whether they can live up to their promises is going to be another thing. The Europeans promised...

the possibility of pushing a one-month ceasefire that would involve cessation of hostilities from the air and from the sea. So no long-range attacks by Russia on Ukraine's energy infrastructure or indeed training grounds, if you want to take the latest news, and no Ukraine drone strikes on Russian oil refineries.

Macron had this idea of a month-long ceasefire from air and sea. Keir Starmer also had some plans, and then there was also something from Ursula von der Leyen, right? So we're talking about a massive step up. Europe has already started, but this will be a massive increase in the defense production in the effect of rearming Europe.

The von der Leyen said very clearly that no longer can they or should they rely on anyone else but themselves to rearm and make sure that they have enough ammunition, arms, weapons in case of any kind of future conflict.

and also the ability to be able to keep Ukraine supplied with the vast amount of ammunition that it needs. And then, of course, there's the possibility of, and this is where it gets a little bit nebulous, the possibility of peacekeepers on the ground to act as some sort of trigger force or bolster or confidence-building measure for Ukraine during any kind of peacetime and something that they think might well deter Russian aggression.

That's going to be a key sticking point. Yeah, you had Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the UK will allocate $2 billion to supply Ukraine with 5,000 air defence missiles. European countries have to do more and provide a security guarantee. And that's what I'm discussing with President Macron and others. It's what I'll be discussing today. But I've always been clear that that is going to need a US backstop.

So these are the type of things that were discussed at the meeting. Just generally, what did you make of the reaction from Europe to the meeting that happened in the Oval Office? I think they were aghast. They were horrified at what has happened. And it's one thing to know that President Trump may move away and start a rapprochement with Russia and slow down

the move to keep rearming Ukraine, because that's already been indicated in congressional votes as well. So there's been a general perception amongst Republicans in the United States and some Democrats as well that, you know, we've got problems at home where we're sending billions and billions of dollars worth of arms and money and aid to

to a country that it's not our war, it's a European war. Why are we doing this? A kind of more of an isolationist or America first policy. So it wasn't a complete surprise, but when it did happen, when you saw it and in the way that it happened and in that way that no sitting head of state has been ever spoken to like that, certainly not in public,

That was a real lightning bolt. It's here, folks. The change is now. Yeah. A unifying event, maybe. Yes, absolutely. Let's see how unifying. Okay. This is the problem with a union of 27 members.

All of them who have their own fiscal concerns, strategic concerns, each one of them with their own different set of worries, fears, problems, and solutions to those problems as well. And obviously,

geographical issues as well. So it's a big, big place, Europe. And, you know, what concerns the UK is very, very different perhaps to what concerns, you know, one of the border states, say Poland or whatever. Yeah. So there's an issue.

So before we get answers to the questions of these plans and whether or not they'll work, you are our defense editor. So I would love it if you could just remind us what is happening on the ground, the actual conditions on the battlefield and where those battlefields are at the moment in the war in Ukraine. So I was in Ukraine in August and I was in Ukraine again in December reporting for Al Jazeera and the battlefield had hardly changed.

There's an awful lot of fighting, there's an awful lot of dying and killing.

But in terms of movement, it was incremental and really down to World War I levels of movement. A few hundred meters, a kilometer or two, a little village. Not that there'd be much left of it if it's been fought over. It's just going to be where the village was at one stage. And that hasn't changed. The focus for the entire front really was Pokrovsk.

And that area in Donetsk where the Russians thought they were about to break through, they'd committed tank divisions. They got a mauling. They pulled them back. The Ukrainians threw in everything they had.

It's fought the Russians pretty much to a standstill, although the Russians are edging forward, but at tremendous cost. We're talking, you know, hundreds of casualties a day and losses that are really not sustainable over the long term, regardless of how you feel about your soldiers or not, or indeed how, you know,

uncaring you are about throwing forces in and armed forces, sooner or later you'll run out. Sooner or later, troops will refuse to fight if it's that bad. I mean, you will face some massive morale problems. So that's pretty much where it's at.

The war has taken on more vigor in the long-range sense. So you've had Russian missiles that are being fired. Of course, Kyiv is protected very well by American Patriot systems, which are very good at taking out like the high-end missiles, like the hypersonics, all the rest of it, like the Kinzhal, or the Iskander, but you're not going to be able to protect every single part of the battlefield in every single city.

And then, of course, Ukraine is responding, by the way, by trying to strike at Russia's ability to conduct an industrial war. So oil refineries to attack depots that, you know, basically degrade Russia's ability to be able to keep on fighting at this sort of level that they have been.

They're both finding their targets and they're hitting them. But again, this terrible, terrible juggernaut, this stalemate where they're just grinding up against each other in Pokrovsk and in other areas. And it's attritional warfare at its worst. It really is. That's so interesting because it's...

In some ways, this war is notable because it's so modern. It's changed everything about the war. And yet what you're describing just feels like a throwback to World War I. So how has this war changed things in terms of our understanding of what it takes to win a war?

Massively. Things that had to be relearned. The West had had about a decade and a half of anti-terrorism, focusing on chasing down insurgent groups, which are skill sets all of their own that armies tend to forget when they don't have to because then you have a new generation that comes in. But this is a hot industrial war. This is, you're fighting, you know, Russia's army was much, much larger than Ukraine's, but Ukraine's army was

at the beginning of the conflict was about the size of that of France. So it wasn't nothing. I mean, you know, they had their own armor divisions, et cetera, et cetera. So you could say a near peer adversary. So tanks had to be brought back.

The world's militaries were saying, "No, no, no, tanks are over. It's all long-range precision fire," which it is, by the way, long-range artillery, long-range missiles. Missiles used to be throwaway, or rather throwbacks from the Cold War, which would normally be nuclear-tipped. So you didn't need that many of them. And they were almost boutique-made in the sense of, you know, hand-built, each one. Whereas now, you realize we don't need a few hundred here, we need thousands.

And we need them to be cheap and powerful, long range and deadly. We need it all, basically. And to be easily made. Tanks are making a comeback. Yeah, big time. Who knew? And drones. Drones now. Drones. No army can sneak up on another army. You've got all the drones in the air. You've got the surveillance ones. You've got the strike ones. You've got the longer range ones. And they're going to try and figure out ways how to kind of spoof each other.

It's been less of an evolution and more a revolution in terms of drone technology. And the Ukraine conflict is exactly where it's being developed. We'll have more with Alex after a quick break. This week on True Crime Reports. It's 2015 and we're in the tropical forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

A man, a member of a local indigenous community, enters the forest with his son in search of medicinal herbs. They come across a group of eco-guards who've been placed here to protect the area from poachers. The guards open fire and the man's son is shot dead. So how far are Western groups willing to go in the name of conservation?

True Crime Reports, a new global crime show from Al Jazeera. Subscribe and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

All right. So let's take stock here. We're post White House meeting. We're post this EU summit in London. So there's a bunch of options on the table. I think one is that President Zelenskyy mends his relationship with Trump and does that rare minerals deal, gives the U.S. access to Ukraine's minerals without security guarantees. Right. That's that's that's one option.

So the UK and the EU, I think, are still hoping that Zelensky plays nice and he can actually get some security guarantees if he's really nice. But I think the third option really is that the UK and Europe are defending themselves from Russia on their own without the US. Is that the state of play? Do I have that right? I think you do. Yes, exactly. And certainly those last two are really the only possible solutions, although I don't know if Europe's able to step up to it.

Europe started building up its defense, military-industrial complexes, defense industries, to be able to cope with what Trump had insisted on. And not just President Trump, by the way. This didn't start with President Trump. This started way, way back under Obama.

When the Americans, with some justification, have turned around and said to Europeans, enough riding on our coattails militarily. Sorry, you're basically using our money to supplement your budgets because you don't want to pay for defense because it's the Cold War's over. But guess what? You want us to and you want us to guarantee your security. And the age of bottomless pockets, especially after 2008, the financial crisis,

were very much over. And that was announced publicly by then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates. So President Trump has really just kind of carried that on. But yes, he has turned around and said, "Sorry, pay up. Pay your way."

And when you see the level of money that, you know, the United States has given to Ukraine, it's vast. And not just military aid, also what is almost as important, the economic aid that provides a stable economy means it doesn't tank dramatically. Money's going to come from somewhere.

And that provides political stability. That's going to be something. Will that be removed? I mean, what is exactly President Trump talking about? There are reports now in the media that he says that he's going to scan through and have a look at maybe this aid needs to be trimmed down or canceled and in the next few days as well. So this is a tap that everybody's realizing suddenly that can be quite sharply turned off should he wish it.

So say it is turned off immediately. What are the immediate effects of that? Why does it? Because it seems theoretically a good idea. Europe just fills in the gap. But where is it felt? Is it the lack of air support? Is it the lack of munitions? It'll be the lack of ammunition primarily, but not just ammunition.

You need infantry fighting vehicles. You need to be able to replace those. You need tanks. You need to be able to replace those. Artillery systems get worn out. I think a barrel life is roughly about 5,000 rounds. So, you know, you need to be able to replace all this equipment, plus the stuff that's been destroyed or damaged, and you can fix some of it.

Rheinmetall, the German arms combine, is opening up a factory, an ammunition factory within Ukraine itself. It already refurbishes Leopard tanks as well and is stepping up as well. There comes a point where you can't give everything to a foreign military and denude yourself of the ability to be able to fight. So you don't mind dipping into your stockpiles, but you don't want to give them every last thing.

So, and the way that the Ukrainian military is using all this up is, is colossal. So that's something that really does need to be careful. I mean, the numbers are staggering. You know, we're talking thousands and thousands of rounds a day, and this goes on day after, it doesn't stop. There's never a day where it stops. And it's been going on for three years. Yeah. Let's finish with a discussion about victory and a discussion about peace.

Considering how beaten down both of these armies are, what does victory look like at this stage? Obviously, Ukraine wants Russian forces out of its territory, but that seems unlikely now. But it's a goal. What is Russia's goal? What does victory look like for Russia? I mean, all it has to do is just keep what it has. It has 20 percent of the country.

You could easily argue President Putin and President Zelensky need to both go back to their respective populations and say something like they won. Yeah. Or it was worth it in order to be able to survive politically. Yeah, Alex, in a sense, they both did win. I mean, Ukraine stood up to one of the largest armies and superpowers in the world. Sure did. And Russia got 20%. And now that's just off the table that they would even lose that 20% that they took. Yeah. I feel that...

Zelensky will come out worse from this. Absolutely, you're absolutely right. They stopped a superpower pretty much in its tracks and kept them at bay. Sure, with massive amounts of help, but it was the Ukrainians doing the fighting and the dying. So that's an achievement in itself. But I don't know if that's going to satisfy everybody. And when I say everybody, it's not just a civilian population. You'll have...

several hundred thousand people under arms who might be very, very disillusioned with what they thought, well, hang on a sec here, does this mean we lose all the territory? Does this mean Russia keeps Crimea? Because in the heady days of the success of the first Ukrainian counteroffensive,

You know, they were talking about driving everybody back, you know, right back to the borders and they were going to drive all the Russians out. And clearly that hasn't happened. So, yes, I think victory is going to look very, very different for either of them. And I think Zelensky's got a really tough job ahead of him if he's going to try and survive politically.

It does feel like there is some momentum to ending this war and what it looks like and what that piece looks like is the only thing that matters from Zelensky's point of view, certainly.

And it seemed like this meeting that happened that broke down in the White House, it wasn't over whether or not Zelensky was wearing a tie. It came down to security guarantees. He kept trying to remind the president and the vice president, look, without security guarantees, you just can't trust Putin because he keeps going back on his word. Right. So without those security guarantees, how can you possibly have a peace?

I mean, do you think like a Korean-style armistice is on the table here? Well, that may be, well, what we're looking at. That's actually a really good analogy. And it comes down to what the European fear is, that you're kicking this conflict just further down the line. So it stops for a while, but that gives everybody the chance to rearm. It gives, certainly, Russia a chance to rearm. I mean, it's lost an awful lot of people. But what it has gained is...

It's ironed out. You know, it's got good commanders now. It's learned a lot from this conflict. If they tried to fight a wider conflict three years ago, they would have been torn apart. I mean, they couldn't even take Ukraine. But if they tried to fight NATO, they would have been destroyed. Whereas now, I don't know, they might have a better idea of how to go about it. Alex Katopoulos, thank you for coming on The Take today. My pleasure. And that's The Take.

This episode was produced by Khaled Sultan, Amy Walters, and Sari El-Khalili, with Philip Llanos, Spencer Klein, Hanna Shokir, Melanie Marich, and me, Kevin Hurtin. It was edited by Noor Wazwaz. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abusala and Mohanad Almelham. Alexandra Locke is the take's executive producer, and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio. We'll be back tomorrow.