But what does Putin want?

[ad_1]

The Kremlin leader will meet with the US president on August 15 in Alaska to decide the fate of Ukraine. Trump no longer wants to finance this war. Putin no longer wants NATO missiles “on his doorstep.” Europe, ruined, no longer matters.

The Trump-Putin summit on August 15, 2025, will take place without Zelensky. And without Europe. Ukraine obviously rejects any compromise involving the cession of its territories, while Russia demands that Ukraine abandon four partially occupied regions (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, Kherson) and Crimea, annexed in 2014. And that it does not join NATO.

The miscalculations of European leaders

As for Europe, once again humiliated by Trump, it is struggling in vain. Since February 2022 and Putin’s “police operation,” it has spent billions of euros to support Kiev militarily. It has deprived itself of Putin’s gas and oil, believing it would “bring the Russian economy to its knees,” according to the ill-fated expression of a French economy minister. It has bought its wheat and poultry at lower prices, to the detriment of our farmers. In fact, Europe has shot itself in the foot. The boomerang effect has been catastrophic. Deprived of abundant and cheap energy, European economies, led by Germany and France, have sacrificed their industries and destroyed small and medium-sized businesses, which have been forced to buy LNG and oil from the US at high prices.
Meanwhile, Russia has circumvented sanctions by selling its energy to China and India.

Europe left out in the cold

On the night of August 9-10, 2025, several European leaders, including Emmanuel Macron (France), Giorgia Meloni (Italy), Friedrich Merz (Germany), Donald Tusk (Poland), Keir Starmer (United Kingdom), Alex Stubb (Finland), and Ursula von der Leyen (European Commission), attempted to make their presence felt on the international stage. They issued a joint statement calling for:

Maintaining pressure on Russia through sanctions and restrictive measures.
Providing military and financial support to Ukraine, particularly through the “coalition of volunteers.”
Adopting an approach combining “active diplomacy, support for Ukraine and pressure on Russia.”

A foolish and dangerous position. The leaders of European countries, marginalized by the two great powers, continue to provide unwavering support to Volodymyr Zelensky, that comedian in camouflage gear, as we wrote here, and whose true identity remains a mystery.

Zelensky: hero or villain?

Welcomed like a rock star in every European capital, showered with gold and honors, Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded ever more weapons and ever more dollars to wage war on Putin. A flood of dollars has poured into Ukraine in just a few years. Who controls these financial flows? No one. Billions of euros and dollars disappear in the fog of war. But they feed the offshore accounts of oligarchs and their cronies.
The same goes for weapons. Brussels, the Pentagon, and Interpol are concerned that Ukraine is becoming a global hub for arms trafficking.
In a well-researched article, Les Crises magazine states that “the United States has no idea where its military aid will end up,” admitting that it (the weapons) could “fall into dangerous hands.” “The unprecedented influx of weapons raises fears that some equipment could fall into the hands of Western adversaries or reappear in distant conflicts in the years to come,” US authorities lament in an article in the Washington Post.

And what about Putin in all this?

He has been saying the same thing for three years. “They say what they do, but we never listen,” notes criminologist Alain Bauer. Looking back at the geopolitical roots of the war in Ukraine, Alain Bauer points out that “the West—Europe and the United States—forgot the commitments made to Gorbachev during German reunification: no expansion toward Kaliningrad, Georgia, or Ukraine.”

Putin says nothing else. He does not want “missiles on our doorstep.” Here is what he says precisely. “We have made it clear that any NATO movement eastward is unacceptable,” he says. “What is so hard to understand about that? Are we placing missiles near the US borders? No! The US has come close to our borders with its missiles. They are already on our doorstep. Is it too much to ask not to install strike systems near our borders? Not an inch eastward, we were assured in the 1990s. So what? Well, they just cheated. They lied. Five waves of NATO expansion. And now, in Romania and Poland, such strike systems are appearing. That is the issue. Understand this: we are not threatening anyone. Have we moved closer to the borders of the United States or the United Kingdom? No. And now they say that Ukraine is part of NATO. And [missile] systems will be installed there. That’s what we’re talking about. And they’re asking me for guarantees?”