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Speaker 1: Brian Bridge.

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Speaker 2: Europe is forming a coalition of the willing to try

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Speaker 2: and guarantee peace in Ukraine. They've had an emergency leader's

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Speaker 2: summit last night, this after the Zelenski Trump dvounced scrap

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Speaker 2: at the weekend. Starma is promising billions more for Ukraine

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Speaker 2: and he wants his buddies in Europe to follow suit.

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Speaker 2: Every nation must contribute to that in the best way

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Speaker 2: that it can, bringing different capabilities.

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Speaker 1: And support to the table, but all taking responsibility to act.

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Speaker 2: It would Lucas's senior fellow at the Center for European

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Speaker 2: Policy Analysis, it would hello.

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Speaker 1: Well, hello, Ryan, nice to hear you.

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Speaker 2: Nice to be with you. So it looks like Europe's

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Speaker 2: got America's message loud and clear.

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Speaker 1: Finally, yes, I'm not quite sure what the message is.

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Speaker 1: Do we think that Trump is sad, mad or bad?

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Speaker 1: Or maybe we should be glad that he's finally kicked

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Speaker 1: the Europeans into action. But certainly things are moving faster

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Speaker 1: than they have done before and in the right direction.

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Speaker 1: Whether it's quite enough is another matter.

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Speaker 2: What more is needed?

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Speaker 1: We need to start off by really giving Ukraine the

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Speaker 1: weapons it needs to defend itself and to deter further

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Speaker 1: Russian attacks. That would mean that any cease far talks

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Speaker 1: start from a position where Ukraine's gone a military edge.

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Speaker 1: It looks as though there's going to be an initial truce,

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Speaker 1: just a partial truce to see if they can manage

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Speaker 1: to stop the Russians hitting energy infrastructure and things like that,

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Speaker 1: and if that succeeds, it'll go on to a cease far.

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Speaker 1: This is obviously to be presented to Trump because the

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Speaker 1: American plan is I think, much less attractive to the Ukrainians.

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Speaker 1: If the European plan works, we can go to the

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Speaker 1: Americans and say, hey, our plan's working, why you support it?

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Speaker 1: And there's not much chance I think of our supporting

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Speaker 1: Trump's plan, which is basically a surrender to boot him.

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Speaker 1: And then the hard staff starts, which is how do

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Speaker 1: we actually protect Ukraine postsease far? And that's going to

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Speaker 1: be really tricky for the Europeans.

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Speaker 2: So you've got Stama talking about boots on the ground

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Speaker 2: and birds in the sky. But Posen has said very

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Speaker 2: clearly through Levrov, I don't want any troops on the border,

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Speaker 2: peacekeepers whatever, I don't want them. How's this going to work?

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Speaker 1: Well? Indeed, and this will be a big test for

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Speaker 1: the Europeans. Are we willing to deploy our forces in

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Speaker 1: harm's way in Ukraine to protect Ukraine post cease far

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Speaker 1: against the wishes of the Russians? And what happens if

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Speaker 1: the Russians then attack our troops? You drone hits of

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Speaker 1: British or French or German barracks and kills a few people.

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Speaker 1: What do we do send across press release or do

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Speaker 1: we far back and hit something inside Russia?

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Speaker 2: Who's actually in the so called coalition of the Willing

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Speaker 2: that everyone's talking about. Who's likely to be in it?

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Speaker 2: All the big players, Well.

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Speaker 1: It's clearly the Brits and the French are. The problem

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Speaker 1: for the others is that the countries that are most

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Speaker 1: threat aware Finns, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, Poles, Swedes, r

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Speaker 1: weg Ands, Danes are pretty tied up defending themselves. There's

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Speaker 1: not a huge number of spare troops there, and the

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Speaker 1: Estonians are worried that the small number of British troops

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Speaker 1: or in Estonia might be taken out in order to

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Speaker 1: go to Ukraine. The countries with really big militaries are

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Speaker 1: the Turks, for example, they could help, and there maybe

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Speaker 1: something there, but in the end to defend Ukraine properly,

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Speaker 1: you need roughly two hundred thousand troops there, two hundred

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Speaker 1: thousand getting ready to go, two hundred thousand recovering from

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Speaker 1: having been there. That would be the sort of rolling

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Speaker 1: deployment to give them a South Korean or West German

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Speaker 1: style defense. Going back to the days of the Cold War,

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Speaker 1: and we defended West Germany against the Warsaw Pact, and

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Speaker 1: Europe just doesn't have that. So even with the Americans,

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Speaker 1: we don't have that. So it places a huge weight

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Speaker 1: onto terrace, the belief in Russia that we will far

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Speaker 1: back if we're hit, and that's going to be a

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Speaker 1: test of political will as well as of military muscle.

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Speaker 2: All Right, you would thank you very much for that.

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Speaker 2: Edward Lucas, Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis.

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