Zelensky Boyant, but Europe far from replacing the security guarantees of the United States

President Volodymyr Zelensky was in a good mood when I met him in Paris with a panel of three other European journalists. He had interrupted a meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace and returned there for what he called a “Tête à tête” dinner after the interview.

Macron had not only extended the red carpet for him. The Eiffel Tower, behind Zelensky in an image window while we talked in one of the great Museums of Paris, was illuminated in yellow and blue, the colors of the Ukrainian national flag.

The French wanted me to feel as if it were among friends. Zelensky had come to Paris to meet leaders and diplomats from 30 other countries who are working on what can contribute to the “coalition of the provisions”, the group that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are trying to organize to offer Ukraine security guarantees if there is a long -term cessation.

Zelensky’s welcome in Paris was a clear contrast to the Dressing, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, gave it and his vice president JD Vance when he visited the White House last month.

After his verbal attack, Zelensky was left without ceremonies to the White House and not long after, Trump ordered the suspension of American military aid and intelligence to Ukraine.

It was restored after Zelensky, advised by the British, French and other European allies, struggled to repair his fences with Trump and his administration.

He changed the type of flattering language that Trump demands and agreed an American plan for a high unconditional fire of 30 days. First he dropped his insistence on the security guarantees of the USA. UU. To underpin any fire.

But although American military and intelligence assistance is flowing, Trump’s ruthless suspension, which cost him Ukrainian life, has left a deep sense of restlessness in Ukraine and among his European allies.

The evidence is accumulating that Trump’s United States is not a reliable ally. It is easier to outline scenarios in which it might not be an ally at all.

Most European leaders still try to act publicly as if the 80 -year -old alliance with the United States were healthy. But the meeting of 30 countries in Paris shows that they realize that they can no longer trust the benevolence of the United States.

The US presidents returning to Dwight D. Eisenhower in the late 1950s have complained, with good reasons, about Europeans who obtain a free trip of the United States security blanket over Europe. Trump has finally away.

During the interview, Zelensky praised the variety of plans that are being formulated in Western Europe, directed by the United Kingdom, France and Germany, to spend more in defense.

He suggested that in three or five years, “if everything goes now,” Europe could even catch up with the United States.

In the best case, that is a highly optimistic estimate, less an accurate prognosis and more a gesture of appreciation for European allies that, unlike Americans, attach very few conditions and strings to support Ukraine.

Europe, Zelensky said: “It has discipline and not chaos.” That could be seen as an oblique and unhappy comparison with the turns and turns that leave Trump’s White House.

I asked him about the conditions that the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, has attributed the last small step in Trump’s peace initiative, which is a high sea fire in the Black Sea.

After Ukraine and Russia held separate meetings with Americans in Saudi Arabia, Kremlin issued a statement that required concessions as a price of Russia for a high fire.

The most significant demand was for a Russian state bank to be readmitted to the Swift system for international payments. That would open a door to conventional global trade for Russia.

That decision does not depend on Trump, since Swift is based on Belgium.

The spokeswoman for Foreign Affairs of the European Union responded with a statement by saying that one of the “main” previous “conditions to lift or modify the sanctions to Russia was” the end of the unpaved and unjustified Russian aggression in Ukraine and the unconditional withdrawal of all Russian military forces of the entire territory of Ukraine. “

Even Trump, reluctant to criticize Putin, suggested that Russia could be “dragging the feet” in negotiations with the United States. He reminded him of his own commercial career.

He told the US cable channel. Uu. Newsmax that “I have done it over the years … I don’t want to sign a contract. I want me to stay in the game.”

I asked Zelensky where the impulse was for a fire, given Russia’s demands. He asked for a resolved response from Americans.

“If the United States will remain strong and not bend the conditions of the Russians, we stop in our land.

“We are defending it; we have shown our resistance to all … and now it is very important that our partners be resistant and strong, at least to a minimum, as we are.”

I asked him if he believed that the Americans, as he said, would remain strong.

“I hope yes. I hope yes. God bless they will. But we’ll see.”

Zelensky does not have the option of affirming his faith in Trump’s America, although he must have serious doubts.

Trump’s decision to punish Ukraine by cutting military intelligence on Russia missile releases had an immediate and deadly impact, and Zelensky had to work hard for Trump to yield. He doesn’t want it to happen again.

He was open about why he had to try to stay close to Trump, even when the president of the United States seemed to be prioritizing the restoration of relations with Moscow while repeating roller propaganda points, no less the lie that Ukraine began the war.

“We needed to unlock the help of the United States. For us, the exchange of intelligence is very important.”

That did not stop Zelensky by rebuking the comments made by Steve Witkoff, Trump’s super envoy, a real estate billionaire, became a diplomat that deals with the Middle East, as well as with the Russian-Ukraine War.

In an interview last week with Tucker Carlson, a right -wing podcaster in the United States, Witkoff belittled the impulse of the United Kingdom Starmer and Macron de France to create the “coalition of the willing” to support Ukraine.

The American said it was a position and a pose, “a simplistic desire” to sound like Winston Churchill. His words fit directly into what now seems to be an opinion established in the Trump administration that his former allies in Europe are a parasitic burden for the United States.

What would happen if Witkoff was right? Disassembly insults and recognizes that the richest nations in Europe have chosen, for decades, to spend most of their considerable wealth on matters that they consider more pressing than their military.

Zelensky said Witkoff and others in the Trump administration had fallen in love with Russian propaganda.

“I think Witkoff often cites Kremlin’s stories … I can’t be ungrateful for Americans for everything they did, but often they are often unfortunately, under the influence of Russian narratives. And we cannot agree with these narratives.”

Zelensky suggested that Witkoff was better in his former job, developing real estate in Manhattan.

“It doesn’t seem like a military. It doesn’t seem like a general, and has no such experience. As far as I know, it’s very good selling and buying real estate. And this is a bit different.”

President Zelensky, for a man who has lived with immense pressure since the invasion of the full scale of Russia more than three years ago, was remarkably buoyant, clearly satisfied with the reception he had in Paris and the efforts that President Macron and Prime Minister Starmer are doing to gather European support and persuade, even Cajole, Trump, not reduce the intelligence and military support to UKRAINE.

Zelensky seemed happy with his new strategy of accepting temporary alcillos to force Putin to show his reluctance to stop the war.

I asked Zelensky how I was dealing with the pressure. His goal, he said, was that his children could “walk down the street and not have to hide.” And how he thought he would be remembered; How did the man who saved Ukraine, or tried and failed? Zelenky made a slightly grimace. Better, he said, that Putin, who was aging and feared his own people.

“It will die soon. It is a fact. His reign could end before finishing his historically insignificant and without success life. This is what he fears.”

Zelensky laughed.

“And I will do everything I can to defend Ukraine as much as I can. And I’m definitely younger than Putin.”

Trump could be waiting for a Easter agreement. Zelensky is still looking in the long term.