'Make no mistake, Russia will not stop at Ukraine'

Russia is a cruel and vindictive state and has Moldova, Georgia and Romania in its sight, says Sir Richard Shirreff. Europe need to make the sacrifices necessary to protect itself

- Sir Richard Shirreff

There have been many words used over the past couple of days to describe the shabby deal Trump is planning to do with president Vladimir Putin. Few have captured the emotions of many, more than the words of a British official, who said it had gone down "like a bowl of cold sick".

Certainly, this week’s pronouncements by Trump and his acolyte Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News anchor who is now the US secretary of defence, have generated anger and despair in Ukraine and among its supporters. But they have also confirmed, with perfect clarity, what has been clear to European members of Nato and Canada since Trump returned to the White House: America, for 80 years since the end of the Second World War, the guarantor of European security, can no longer be trusted as an ally.

European Nato members have, in many ways, created the conditions for America’s abdication of leadership of the “free world” by their willingness to freeload off American largesse. They must now look to themselves and look after their own, and Ukraine’s security. As General Slim said when commanding troops in Burma in the face of the Japanese invasion in 1942: “God helps those who help themselves.”

It is not without irony that America’s craven appeasement of Putin comes at the start of the Munich Security Conference, a repeat of Britain and France’s betrayal of Czechoslovakia in Munich in 1938. A preening Trump may claim he is the master of the deal, but in conceding Ukrainian territorial sovereignty and Nato membership over the heads of the Ukrainians and Europe, he has, at a stroke, strengthened Putin and demonstrated his weakness.