Two statements from world leaders this week bear closer examination. On May 27, the US president Donald Trump took to his Truth Social social media channel to proclaim that if it wasn’t for him, “lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia”. The following day the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, announced that his country would assist Ukraine in developing long-range missiles to deploy against targets inside Russia. Both statements are quite extraordinary.
Even by Trump’s own standards, the public declaration by a sitting US president that he is protecting the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is unprecedented. Putin is under indictment for war crimes and has been waging a war of aggression against Ukraine for more than three years after having illegally annexed Crimea over a decade ago. There can now be no doubt left that the US has become an unreliable ally for Ukraine and its European partners.
This is the context in which Merz’s announcement of increasing defence cooperation with Ukraine becomes significant. While Trump continues to chase an impossible deal with Putin – even after threatening to abandon his mediation efforts less than ten days ago – Germany has doubled down on Ukraine’s defence.
