BRUSSELS (news agencies) — European Union leaders plan to hold emergency talks on Thursday to agree ways to quickly increase their military budgets after the Trump administration signaled that Europe must take care of its own security and also suspended assistance to Ukraine.
In just over a month, President Donald Trump has overturned old certainties about U.S. reliability as a security partner, as he embraces Russia and withdraws American support for Ukraine.
On Monday, Trump ordered a pause to U.S. military supplies to Ukraine as he sought to press President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to engage in negotiations to end the war with Russia, bringing fresh urgency to the EU summit in Brussels.
“Europe faces a clear and present danger on a scale that none of us have seen in our adult lifetime. Some of our fundamental assumptions are being undermined to their very core,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned in a letter to the EU’s 27 leaders, who will consider ways to access more money for defense spending and ease restrictions on it.
But perhaps the biggest challenge for the EU on Thursday will be to take a united stance at a moment when it’s fractured, since much of what the bloc does requires unanimous support.
Whatever happens, the meeting is not expected to address Ukraine’s most pressing needs.
It is not aimed at urgently drumming up more arms and ammunition to fill any supply vacuum created by the U.S. freeze. Nor will it unblock the estimated 183 billion euros ($196 billion) in frozen Russian assets held in a Belgian clearing house, a pot of ready cash that could be seized.
Ukraine’s armed forces, meanwhile, are still battling to slow Russia’s advances along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, especially in the eastern Donetsk region. Tens of thousands of soldiers and more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed.
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