Ralf Dekker on Europe's view of Ukraine and NATO

This speech was originally delivered by Dutch MP Ralf Dekker, to the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs on 13 February 2025.

Chairman,

For the first time in three years, there has been renewed contact between Russia and the United States at the presidential level. At last. Trump and Putin have spoken, among other things, about Ukraine.

 As Forum for Democracy has argued from the beginning, the Ukraine conflict is not a local dispute where Russia just invaded Ukraine, but a proxy war between the United States and Russia with years of build-up preceding it.

Instead of the US, one may also say ‘NATO’. This makes little difference because, as we know, NATO is totally dominated by the United States.

Ukraine has become the battlefield, Ukrainians, soldiers, the vast majority of the many hundreds of thousands of victims. 

So it is good news that direct talks are being held between Trump and Putin.

The other countries and government leaders involved are essentially irrelevant.  They cannot make a difference and mostly have their own interests in mind which complicate matters and stand in the way of a quick end to the bloodshed. The same applies to Ukraine and Zelensky. 

The geopolitical irrelevance of the EU bureaucracy and EU countries has been made painfully clear in recent days by the new US leadership. An equal alliance of EU countries with the US was always an illusion. We are complete vassals, blind followers of the US. This has now become grimly visible to the rest of the world as well. 

As Forum for Democracy has repeatedly predicted here, it looks like Trump will withdraw the US from the Ukraine conflict. He has now got the real information it seems and has understood that it is hopeless. The battle is lost. That Ukrainian soldiers under the instigation of Zelensky and the West are still fighting on in hopeless position is heroic, but at the same time cynical and criminal. Large numbers of young people are dying every day.

Keith Kellogg has been phased out as envoy, the peace plan he was supposed to present is off the table. Steve Witcoff has become the man. There can hardly be any real negotiation with Russia. Essentially, Russia will set the terms. 

The challenge now is mainly how to use bluff and spin to prevent the American departure from looking like a humiliating defeat to the whole world. For America and for NATO.

The impending US departure from the Ukraine conflict has led Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Great Britain and EU foreign affairs representative, Kaja Kallas, to issue the so-called Weimar Statement. This expressed support for Ukraine, announced a joint strengthening of military capabilities and advocated that the EU and Ukraine should be involved in any negotiations with Russia.

Although the Netherlands is not on the list of signatories, the NL government has already expressed its full support.

With this, Europe seems to want to continue the very line the US is leaving. This gives a ludicrous impression. It is as if the lackey still wants to carry out the orders of his previous master.

Mr chairman, it is high time we in the Netherlands finally started thinking for ourselves again about our position in the world. The US-dominated NATO era is coming to an end. This should have happened back in 1991 when the Soviet Union was dissolved. 

Do we now want to surrender without question to some kind of EU-driven fake NATO where Brussels bureaucrats, Poles and British will call the shots? To defend ourselves in cooperation with these countries with a massively increased defence budget against the Russians who have never had any ambition to take the West, and against whom we are hopeless anyway when it really matters? 

Or do we take time to reflect? Let us not commit ourselves immediately.  What about neutrality and good relations on all sides? That is FVD’s preferred option.

Thank you.