Phone call to Trump from Tirana. But US president considers Europe out of negotiations with Moscow

At Tirana summit on European security, EU and Kiev leaders forced to chase US president back from Gulf. Meanwhile Brussels launches yet another package of sanctions against Russia, now routine without effectiveness

There is no table, no thread, no protocol. In Tirana, the European leaders look more like a group of friends left out of the game than heads of state at the summit of the European political community. With them also Volodymyr Zelensky, the only one in a camouflage jacket among blue suits, while the speakerphone call with Donald Trump is consumed between the embarrassed stares of Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, Olaf Scholz, Donald Tusk and Friedrich Merz.

Trump, who was expected in Istanbul for a hypothetical summit with Putin, closed his stop in the Gulf on his way to Washington on Air Force One (the old one, because the jet donated by Qatar will take time). And it is from the plane that he grants audience to the Europeans, excluded from the real negotiations that are being played out elsewhere, and forced to chase after the American president in an attempt to coordinate at least a message.

The so-called “willing ones”, i.e. the states ready to send troops to Ukraine at the end – or freezing – of the war, are meeting on the sidelines of the summit. But without Giorgia Meloni’s Italy, left out of the military family photo. Last time, in Brussels, not even Pete Hegseth – the Secretary of Defence wanted by Trump – had deigned to attend in the flesh, only participating remotely. The message from the White House is clear: it does not believe in the European format, born after the controversial meeting at the White House between Trump, Zelensky and J.D. Vance.

Meanwhile, Brussels takes refuge in the usual automatism: green light to the 17th sanctions package against Moscow. A ritual that has lost bite, with the Kremlin that, according to several analysts, is only buying time in view of a new, more brutal summer offensive. In the meantime, that croaky phone call on Air Force One has not changed the map of the conflict. Nor did it extend anyone’s life.

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(Source and photo: © AndKronos)