LONDON — Europe faces “crunch time” on the war in Ukraine, a former European president told NBC News, as the continent battles internal division, Russian threats and open hostility from the United States.
Leaders on the continent are feeling “genuine fear and distrust regarding the United States,” Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who led Estonia for a decade until 2016, told NBC News in an interview Thursday. But he also warned that Europe’s internal division “ultimately shows the weakness” of the bloc, and he feared what might happen “unless we start getting our act together.”
His comments came hours before European powers held urgent negotiations Friday on how to keep Ukraine’s war effort alive and before President Donald Trump published his National Security Strategy that spelled out in black and white Washington’s dissatisfaction toward many of its partners across the pond.
Trump had already left Europe out of this week’s negotiations between his envoy Steve Witkoff, son-in-law Jared Kushner and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Finding itself sidelined, the European Union is trying to formulate its own proposal: using frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s war effort. Even that, however, is facing opposition from Belgium, fearing Russian retaliation.
Putin on Thursday reiterated his goal to take eastern Ukraine “by force” unless his unwavering demands are met. He spoke after his predecessor, the hawkish Dmitry Medvedev, said using Russian money to aid Ukraine would be tantamount to a “casus belli” — or an act justifying war — a common Kremlin refrain of his during the 45-month conflict.
“It’s crunch time, I think, for Ukraine and for Europe,” said Ilves, who served two stints as foreign minister before taking Estonia’s top job.
For Europe, this is about more than just Ukraine; they worry any peace that favors Putin will embolden him to attack and meddle elsewhere on the continent, which has seen an uptick in drone incursions and cyberattacks over the past year.
His war machine is making slow progress on the battlefield but suffering heavy casualties. Kyiv, meanwhile, is running low on money and resources, while suffering a manpower shortage and facing allegations of governmental corruption.
The U.S. has historically been Ukraine’s largest financial backer, but this support has waned, Trump says in his new National Security Strategy. Instead, he says European countries can buy American weapons to give to Ukraine.
The broad policy for Europe should prioritize “reestablishing conditions of stability within Europe and strategic stability with Russia,” it says, adding that the U.S. should build up the “healthy nations of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe through commercial ties, weapons sales, political collaboration, and cultural and educational exchanges.”
“It’s clear that the United States is siding with Russia,” Ilves said. “I just saw a clip where Donald Trump is boasting, ‘Oh, they’re paying top dollar for our weapons,’” the Estonian added, paraphrasing the president’s remarks in the Oval Office from Wednesday. “We’re talking about people’s lives here, not just treating it like a commercial venture, that, ‘Oh, boy, we get to sell more weapons and get money for it.’ Morally, the situation is really abysmal,” he said.
He was also particularly critical of the role played by Witkoff and Kushner, both noncareer diplomats, and the apparently limited involvement of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the State Department in dealing with Russia.
“I think that when you have a real estate magnate and the son-in-law of the president doing the highest-level diplomacy and being bamboozled by Putin, it’s inevitable that countries where they still have professional diplomats will react that way,” he said of European nervousness.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said Witkoff, Rubio and Kushner are “working tirelessly to stop the killing between Russia and Ukraine” and held “productive meetings to gather feedback from both sides on a plan that can foster a durable, enforceable peace.”
“As President Trump has said, ‘it takes two to tango’ in order to bring the war to a close,” she added.
After their Kremlin meeting, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday that he had spoken with Witkoff and Kushner, who said they had a “reasonably good meeting” with Putin.
Though Europe has largely stepped up to fund Ukraine where Washington has withdrawn, the continent-wide cost-of-living crisis means they are reluctant to spend more of their own budgets. Hence the proposal this week to use Russian assets frozen at the start of the war.
However, Belgium, where much of that money is held at Euroclear, a Brussels-based financial clearing house that holds the majority of Russia’s assets, is opposing this plan because it fears legal retaliation by Russia.
“It makes a lot more sense to keep the assets where they are, and to keep using the profits that they generate,” said Sven Biscop, a director at the Egmont Institute, a Belgian think tank, who said he agreed with his government’s position.
In resisting efforts against Russia, Belgium joins longtime E.U. contrarian Hungary, whose prime minister, Viktor Orbán, is a friend to both Trump and Putin.
On Friday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen traveled to Belgium in an attempt to persuade its prime minister, Bart De Wever, to drop his opposition.
“It feels like a last-ditch effort to try and unlock a much-needed source of financing,” said John Lough, an associate fellow at Chatham House, a London-based think tank. “Ukraine starts to run out of money in April next year. So there is some urgency here.”
Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday that there was “no mistrust” between the U.S. and Europe. “Unity between Americans and Europeans on the Ukrainian issue is essential. And I say it again and again, we need to work together,” he said during a visit to China.
Undeniable, however, were the contents of Trump’s National Security Strategy, which starkly laid out the most ardent criticisms of Europe voiced by Vice President JD Vance and others this year.
The document accused the E.U. of undermining “political liberty and sovereignty,” of “transforming the continent” through migration, and of “creating strife” through political censorship. It said that declining birth rates had led to the “loss of national identities and self-confidence” and that “the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less.”
It also said that “the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism,” an apparent reference to the continued rise of Europe’s far-right political parties, some of which, in the case of Austria’s Freedom Party, have Nazi roots or, as with Alternative for Germany, are considered “extremist” by the country’s own intelligence agencies.
Through it all, Ilves, the former Estonian president, believes Europe can still play a vital role.
“The European Union has not really shown any of its teeth or used any muscle so far,” he said. “We’re talking about the largest trading bloc in the world,” he added, calling any suggestions of irrelevance “absurd.”
