‘European leaders are complete hypocrites on Ukraine’

The world has watched with equal parts fascination and trepidation as Donald Trump has tried to chart a path to ending the Russia-Ukraine war. The US president has hailed the ‘great progress’ made at recent summits, with Putin in Alaska, and Zelensky and European leaders in Washington. But are we really any closer to a peace that both sides can accept?

Owen Matthews – historian and author of Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin’s War Against Ukraine – appeared on the latest episode of The Brendan O’Neill Show to discuss the state of the conflict, beyond the photo-ops and headlines. What follows is an edited version of the conversation. Watch the full thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: We had the Alaska summit between presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump earlier this month. Then there was the gathering last week in Washington, DC with Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky and various European heads of state. How significant were these summits?

Owen Matthews: Well, I think it’s clear that a ceasefire is now not going to happen as a result of these talks. Putin has exploded Trump’s desire to strike a ceasefire deal. Putin wants a broader peace deal because that gives him time.

But the bottom line in terms of all these summits – and what we need to not lose sight of – is that peace is definitely closer than it was before. We’ve got to give Trump his due. It was a highly ironic spectacle, seeing these European leaders sitting around a table and falling over themselves to praise Trump for opening a dialogue with Putin, who they themselves had shunned and treated as a pariah. He’s moving things forward in a way that they couldn’t – and wouldn’t.

As Trump was caught saying on a hot mic in the White House, he believes that Putin wants to do a deal. He’s right. Putin definitely wants to do a deal. But I think Trump might not have realised that Putin wants a deal on his own terms. He wants the capitulation of Ukraine.

O’Neill: Do you think Trump really understands Putin’s intentions?

Matthews: Putin is extremely good at playing Trump. There was a whole Kremlin brain trust that went into the choreography we saw at the Alaska summit. It was absolutely brilliant – in a Putin-esque, evil sort of way, but brilliant nonetheless.

Putin agreed with Trump that Russiagate was a hoax. He agreed that the war wouldn’t have happened if Trump had been president. He agreed that Trump basically won the 2020 election and postal ballots were the culprit. He essentially rolled out every single talking point that Trump loves to hear. In that sense, when it comes to the ‘art of the deal’, it’s actually Putin, not Trump, who is the master.

Does Trump understand Putin in return? I think Trump is transgressional. He wants to break moulds. If Biden had hated Putin, it makes sense for Trump to do the reverse and to try to overturn his predecessor’s legacy. Putin has been very good at exploiting this desire, and has used it in order to make Ukraine a footnote in the conversation – part of a much larger package of a major strategic reset. I think that appeals to Trump’s vanity very much. He loves the pageantry, and likes feeling as though he is making these very major decisions on the world stage.

O’Neill: What do you make of the European powers’ handling of this war?

Matthews: The truth is that if we, the West, wanted to defeat Russia, we could do that. We could start with not importing Russian oil and gas. But despite levying 18 sanctions packages against Russia, Europe remains the second-largest importer of Russian gas in the world after China. So please spare me the hypocrisy, and shove your sanctions packages where the Sun doesn’t shine.

Of course, if we’re not happy with what rejecting Russian gas would do to our own people, we could actually go to war. We could send in troops. But no one wants to do that either, because Russia is a nuclear-armed power. So all of this is really just rhetorical bravado from the European leaders. If things go on as they are, it will only be at the expense of the Ukrainians, whose future will be poisoned for generations. If you want to save Ukrainian nationhood, you’ve got to stop the bloody war.

Owen Matthew was talking to Brendan O’Neill. Watch the full conversation below: