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.
Credit: AP News