‘Yellow line’ that divides Gaza under Trump plan is ‘new border’ for Israel, says military chief

The “yellow line” that divides Gaza under Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan is a “new border” for Israel, the country’s military chief told soldiers deployed in the territory. The chief of the general staff, Eyal Zamir, said Israel would hold on to its current military positions. These give Israel control of more than half of Gaza, including most agricultural land and the border crossing with Egypt. “The ‘yellow line’ is a new border line, serving as a forward defensive line for our communities and a line of operational activity,” Zamir said during a visit to meet Israeli reservists in northern Gaza, where he also visited the ruins of the Palestinian towns of Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya. “We have operational control over extensive parts of the Gaza Strip and we will remain on those defence lines,” Zamir said, according to an English-language transcript of his remarks provided by a military spokesperson. Palestinians were forced out of this eastern portion of Gaza by Israeli attacks and evacuation orders. Almost all the surviving population, over 2 million people, are now crowded into a narrow zone of coastal sand dunes that is smaller than Washington DC. Zamir’s commitment to keep troops in Gaza appears to contradict the ceasefire agreement signed in October, which specifies that “Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza.” Trump’s 20-point plan commits the Israeli military to “progressively hand over” Palestinian territory to an international security force (ISF) until they have “withdrawn completely from Gaza”, barring a small security perimeter by the border. The Israeli government declined to comment on whether Zamir’s statement reflected official policy. An official said Israeli forces are “deployed in Gaza in accordance with the ceasefire outline” and accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire. The ceasefire agreement links the departure of Israeli forces to the demilitarisation of Hamas, without laying out a mechanism or a timeframe for that to happen. A UN resolution passed last month authorised the creation of the ISF but no countries have yet committed troops to stand it up. Some have expressed interest in joining a peacekeeping force, but none want to risk their soldiers being ordered to fight Hamas, despite pressure from the Trump administration. The Israeli army has built new concrete outposts along the “yellow line” to fortify its positions and declared it a lethal boundary, even though it is not always clearly marked and a ceasefire is in place. Soldiers have repeatedly killed Palestinians they accuse of crossing it, including young children. Concrete bollards laid out to mark some stretches of the line have also been used to expand Israel’s military occupation of Gaza. Satellite images show that some markers have been placed hundreds of metres beyond the boundary agreed on ceasefire maps. The US military has also been planning for the long-term partition of Gaza along the “yellow line”, with one US official describing reunification as “aspirational”. Documents seen by the Guardian envisage the territory split into a “green zone” under Israeli and international military control, where reconstruction would start, and a “red zone” to be left indefinitely in ruins.

European leaders rally behind Ukraine in Downing Street talks

European leaders rallied behind Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday night amid hopes they might finally achieve a breakthrough to allow Ukraine access to billions of pounds of frozen Russian assets. Despite vociferous support for the Ukrainian president, who has come under heavy pressure from Donald Trump to cede territory in order to bring the war to a speedy end, there was still no agreement on the thorny question of turning immobilised assets into a loan for Kyiv. But Downing Street said “positive progress” was made on the issue during crisis talks hosted in Downing Street with Zelenskyy, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz. They were joined on a call by the leaders of seven other European countries, a senior representative from Turkey and Nato and EU chiefs. During the meeting, leaders “underscored the need for a just and lasting peace in Ukraine” including “robust security guarantees” against further Russian aggression, Downing Street said. The leaders agreed that “now is a critical moment” for Ukraine and vowed to ramp up support for Kyiv and increase economic pressure on Moscow “to bring an end to this barbaric war”. The European show of support came after sharp criticism from President Trump, who said he was “a little disappointed” in Zelenskyy, claiming he had not read the US proposal for a peace deal. He insisted without evidence that “his [Ukrainian] people love it” and that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, was “fine with it”. The discussions follow US efforts to push through a peace deal that has triggered widespread concerns because it is seen by many critics as favouring positions held by Russia. Downing Street is hoping for a breakthrough on a deal to seize billions in Russian state assets held by European banks and funnel it to Ukraine. No 10 said the talks on Monday had yielded “positive progress” in the lengthy effort to use “immobilised Russian sovereign assets to support Ukraine’s reconstruction”. More than £180bn of Russian assets has been frozen in European banks and financial institutions since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. EU leaders will meet on 18 and 19 December in a bid to sign off on a long-awaited European Commission proposal to funnel £78bn of the frozen assets into a “reparations loan” that would go to Kyiv next year. The unprecedented proposal hinges on the idea that Moscow would eventually pay Kyiv reparations for the colossal damage caused by the fighting. Kyiv would use the reparations from Moscow to repay the loan to the EU, ensuring that the financial institutions holding the assets would get the money back. Though a majority of EU countries support the plan, it has met strong resistance from Belgium. About £160bn of Russian assets are immobilised at Euroclear, a central securities depository in Brussels, and the Belgian government is concerned that it will bear liability for any seizure and face retaliation from Moscow. The UK is prepared to hand over £8bn of assets frozen in Britain to support Ukraine but wants to do so in conjunction with other European countries. Starmer is set to discuss the issue on Friday with his Belgian counterpart Bart De Wever, who has come under pressure from other EU leaders. A spokesperson for the Belgian prime minister said he would be meeting Starmer in Downing Street to discuss “priorities like migration, supporting Ukraine, European security and mutual economic growth”. The meeting will come a week after Merz flew to Brussels in an effort to persuade De Wever to drop his opposition to the reparations loan plan. British, French, German and Ukrainian national security advisers have been instructed to continue discussions on the US-proposed peace plan this week. Zelenskyy, who has warned that his country “can’t manage” without European and American support, said the talks had been productive and had made a “small progress towards peace”. He said that Ukraine-Europe plans for a peace deal should be ready by tomorrow to share with the US. US officials claim they are in the final stage of reaching an agreement but there is little sign that either Ukraine or Russia is willing to sign the existing framework deal drawn up by Trump’s negotiating team. The foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, was due to meet her US counterpart, Marco Rubio, for further discussions on Monday, with the Foreign Office saying the two sides would “reaffirm their commitment to reaching a peace deal in Ukraine”. The talks follow the publication of a US national security strategy, which spells out the Trump administration’s core foreign policy interests. The document released on Friday by the White House said the US wanted to improve its relationship with Russia after years of Moscow being treated as a global pariah and that ending the war was a core US interest to “re-establish strategic stability with Russia”. Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, said the document was largely in line with Moscow’s vision. The strategy paper also said Nato must not be “a perpetually expanding alliance” and suggested European states faced the “prospect of civilisational erasure” because of migration.

Ukraine war live: Number 10 says Europe must ‘ramp up’ economic pressure on Russia after Zelenskyy meeting – as it happened

And that brings our coverage of Ukraine peace talks between Keir Starmer, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz to a close. Here’s a breakdown of the most important developments from the day: After the meeting with the Ukrainian president at Downing Street this afternoon, Keir Starmer said he and European leaders have agreed on the need for Europe to “stand with Ukraine” and “ramp up” economic pressure on Vladimir Putin. They noted progress had been made by the US-led peace talks and have instructed their national security advisers to continue discussions over the coming days. (18:39) Volodymyr Zelenskyy described today’s talks as “productive”, and said they had made a “small progress towards peace”. He said that a 20-point proposal from Ukraine and Europe for a peace deal would be ready by tomorrow evening to share with the US. (18:13) Before the private talks with Zelenskyy, Macron and Starmer, German chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was “sceptical” about some of the US proposals for a peace deal and added that “these could be decisive” days “for all of us” on Ukraine. (13:35) The issue of territory is still the “most problematic” in talks on ending the war, an official familiar with the negotiations said. “Putin does not want to enter into an agreement without territory. So they are looking for any options to ensure that Ukraine cedes territory,” the official said. (10:28) European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has insisted that the bloc “has the means and the will to increase pressure on Russia to come to the negotiations table.” She particularly defended the EU’s proposal for a reparations loan – backed by frozen Russian assets – a plan that however continues to be opposed by Belgium. (17:08) The leaders of seven EU countries have said a reparations loan for Ukraine based on Russian frozen assets is the most “politically realistic solution” to meet Kyiv’s urgent funding needs. The declaration of support was made in a letter to the European Council president, António Costa, and commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, ahead of an EU summit next week, when Ukraine’s financing needs will be top of the agenda. (8:51) And that’s all from me, Matty Edwards, for today. Jakub Krupa will be back tomorrow. You can email him any tips, comments or suggestions at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. He’s also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

Far-right National Rally ‘not a danger’ to France, Sarkozy claims

The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has said Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) party is “not a danger” to France, and he would not support a united front of parties against Le Pen at the next election. In his new book, written at a “small plywood table” in prison where he recently served 20 days of a sentence for criminal conspiracy, Sarkozy said many of his former supporters were now potential Le Pen voters, and he appeared to include the RN in his vision of a broad French right. The path to rebuilding that right, he wrote, “might be long but I’m certain it can only happen through a spirit of gathering together in the broadest sense possible, with no exclusions and no opprobrium”. Sarkozy’s comments in The Diary of a Prisoner come as Le Pen’s party appeals to traditional right voters in an attempt to broaden its base ahead of the 2027 presidential race. The comments were in stark contrast to Sarkozy’s stance against the far right when he won the presidency in 2007, and his call in 2022 for voters to back the centrist Emmanuel Macron against Le Pen “in the interests of France” at the last presidential election. In the book, to be published on Wednesday, Sarkozy details the time he spent in jail before being released last month, pending an appeal against his conviction over a scheme to obtain election campaign funds from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Sarkozy, who is the first president in the history of modern France to have gone to jail, said he called Le Pen to thank her for her “courageous and unambiguous” support of him after he was convicted. He said the current “judicial context” was something he and Le Pen had in common. He found it “particularly shocking” that Le Pen had been barred from running for office, including the 2027 presidency, after she was found guilty of embezzlement of European parliament funds on a vast scale earlier this year. Le Pen will face an appeal trial next month, which will determine whether or not she can run for president in 2027 or whether her party president, Jordan Bardella, will replace her. Sarkozy said Le Pen had asked him, if there was a snap election, whether he would associate himself with the historical “republican front” of parties uniting to hold back Le Pen’s party. “My answer was unambiguous: ‘No, and what’s more, I’d be open about it and take a public position on the subject when the time came,” Sarkozy wrote. He added that one of Le Pen’s closest allies and MPs, Sébastien Chenu, had written him letters of support each week in prison, which were “sensitive, personal and human”. Charles Kushner, the US ambassador to France, also asked to visit him in prison, Sarkozy said. Kushner, whose son Jared is married to Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, once served a US jail sentence for illegal campaign contributions and tax evasion, among other charges. He received a presidential pardon from Trump in 2020. Reuters reported that, although Kushner was granted permission to see Sarkozy behind bars, the two men did not meet until after his release. A state department spokesperson told Reuters that Kushner had “wanted to visit former president Sarkozy out of personal compassion and respect to Sarkozy as a former French head of state and someone who has been a good friend to the United States”.

England health officials identify newly evolved variant of mpox

Health officials have identified a new variant of mpox in England after a person who recently travelled to Asia was tested for the virus. Genome sequencing showed that the virus was a “recombinant” form containing elements of two types of mpox currently in circulation: the more severe clade 1, and the less virulent clade 2, which sparked the 2022 global mpox outbreak. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA)) said on Monday it was continuing to “assess the significance of the strain”. While most mpox infections are mild, officials urged people who are eligible to get vaccinated to protect themselves. “It’s normal for viruses to evolve, and further analysis will help us understand more about how mpox is changing,” said Dr Katy Sinka, the head of sexually transmitted infections at UKHSA. Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, is a viral infection related to smallpox. It can be passed on through close physical contact with mpox blisters or scabs, through touching contaminated material such as clothing, bedding or towels, or through infected people’s coughs and sneezes. It can also be caught from infected animals such as rats, mice and squirrels. Symptoms can take three weeks to appear and include a high temperature, a headache, muscle pain and exhaustion. A rash typically appears within days of the first symptoms. The UKHSA said the recombinant variant was “not unexpected” as both clades are circulating, adding that its emergence highlighted the potential for the virus to continue evolving and the importance of ongoing genomic surveillance. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a year-long public health emergency during the mpox outbreak in 2022. A second public emergency was declared in 2024 when another mpox epidemic broke out, largely affecting the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That emergency was declared over in September this year. Figures for 2025, which run to the end of October, show that the WHO recorded nearly 48,000 confirmed mpox cases worldwide, including 201 deaths, in 94 countries. The UK has an mpox vaccination programme in place for eligible groups, including those who have multiple sexual partners, participate in group sex or visit sex-on-premises venues. Trudie Lang, professor of global health research at the University of Oxford, said: “If further cases of this strain appear in the UK, and anywhere in the world, it will be important to understand the route of transmission, the presentation and severity of disease, so we can assess whether this strain is more or less dangerous than previous ones.”

False claims Afrikaners are persecuted threaten South Africa’s sovereignty, says president

White supremacist ideology and false claims that South Africa’s Afrikaner minority is being racially persecuted pose a threat to the country’s sovereignty and national security, the country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has warned. Since taking office for his second US presidential term in January, Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed without evidence that South Africa’s government is seizing land and encouraging violence against white farmers. “Some in our society still adhere to notions of racial superiority and seek to maintain racial privilege,” Ramaphosa said on Monday at a conference of his African National Congress (ANC) party, which is the largest in South Africa’s governing coalition and has led every national government since the first post-apartheid democratic elections in 1994. He continued: “The vehement opposition by some groups to our policies of transformation and redress conveniently align with wider notions of white supremacy and white victimhood, fed by false claims of the persecution of white Afrikaners in our country. The propaganda of these false claims has real implications for our sovereignty, international relations and national security.” Trump and the South African-born billionaire Elon Musk have promoted the false claim that there is a “white genocide” in South Africa, bringing what was previously a niche, far-right conspiracy theory to a far wider audience. Without naming either man, Ramaphosa said in his speech: “It is essential that we counter this narrative and defeat this agenda … This is a campaign that needs to be launched not only in our country, but globally as well, particularly to address the notions that some globally are perpetrating about what is happening in South Africa.” The US boycotted last month’s G20 leaders summit in Johannesburg and argued that a consensus could not be reached in its absence. The meeting, led by South Africa, produced a final communique that cited the importance of tackling issues such as gender inequality and climate breakdown, positions that have become anathema to Trump’s agenda. The 2026 summit will take place at the Trump National Doral Miami golf resort in Florida, which is owned by the Trump Organization. The US has invited Poland instead of South Africa to the first meetings of its G20 presidency later this month. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, justified the decision, claiming: “The South African government’s appetite for racism and tolerance for violence against its Afrikaner citizens have become embedded as core domestic policies.” The US has said it will take just 7,500 people as refugees this year, most of them white South Africans, while closing its refugee programme to people fleeing war and persecution. Afrikaners, who make up about 4% of South Africa’s population, or about 2.5 million people, are descendants of Dutch colonisers and French Huguenot refugees who came to South Africa in the late 17th century. They led the apartheid regime from 1948, which violently repressed the black majority, while keeping white people safe and wealthy. White people remain many times wealthier than black South Africans and in 2017 owned 72% of private agricultural land, according to a government land audit. While there have been horrific, high-profile murders of white farmers and their families in recent decades, there is no evidence that they are systematically targeted because of their race or that they suffer disproportionately from South Africa’s high violent crime rate.

Zelenskyy meets European leaders in London for talks on ending Ukraine war

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has met the leaders of the UK, France and Germany in London amid heavy pressure from the Trump administration for Ukraine to cede territory it holds to bring the war to an end quickly. The talks on Monday followed several days of negotiations between US and Ukrainian officials, which ended on Saturday without an apparent breakthrough and were characterised by the Ukrainian president as “constructive, although not easy”. The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, held a bilateral meeting with Zelenskyy in Downing Street, after the two men earlier met with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz. For its part, the Élysée Palace, echoing Starmer, said France planned more work to provide Ukraine with robust security guarantees, a key concern for Kyiv. The meeting took place as European leaders scrambled to show solidarity with Ukraine as the White House’s efforts to push through a peace deal enter a key phase. Starmer insisted that he “won’t be putting pressure” on Zelenskyy to accept a peace settlement, while Merz expressed “scepticism” over the US proposal. After the Downing Street meeting, Zelenskyy was due to meet senior Nato officials and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, in Brussels. Earlier, an official in Kyiv familiar with the talks told AFP that territory remained the most problematic issue. “[Vladimir] Putin does not want to enter into an agreement without territory. So they are looking for any options to ensure that Ukraine cedes territory,” the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said. “The Americans are pressuring, like ‘faster, faster, faster,’” the source added, saying that Ukraine “cannot agree to everything without working out the details”. The latest contacts follow widespread concern over the Trump administration’s framework for a peace proposal, seen by many critics as favouring positions held by Russia. Trump doubled down on that position on Sunday night, suggesting Zelenskyy “hasn’t yet read the [US] proposal” and claiming without evidence that “his people love it”. “And I have to say I’m a little bit disappointed that President Zelenskyy hasn’t yet read the proposal. That was as of a few hours ago.” “Russia, I guess, would rather have the whole country, when you think of it, but Russia is, I believe, fine with it,” Trump said before taking part in the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington. Starmer, Macron and Merz took a more supportive stance toward Kyiv in comments before their Monday meeting, which lasted about two hours. Starmer said the push for peace was at a “critical stage” and stressed the need for “a just and lasting ceasefire”. Merz, meanwhile, said he was “sceptical” about some details in documents released by the US. “We have to talk about it. That’s why we are here,” he said. “The coming days … could be a decisive time for all of us.” Trump’s claim that his plan enjoys Ukrainian public support is contradicted by recent polling by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, which suggests a majority of Ukrainians remain opposed to territorial concessions. Kyiv’s senior negotiator, Rustem Umerov, said Zelenskyy would be briefed about his team’s dialogue with US officials and receive all documents related to the peace plan on Monday. Off the back of the Trump-backed Gaza ceasefire, the US has been working to push through a peace deal between Kyiv and Moscow. US officials claim they are in the final stage of reaching an agreement but there is little sign that either Ukraine or Russia is willing to sign the framework deal drawn up by Trump’s negotiating team. The British foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, is, meanwhile, expected in Washington on Monday, where she will meet her US counterpart, Marco Rubio. “The UK and US will reaffirm their commitment to reaching a peace deal in Ukraine,” the Foreign Office in London said, announcing Cooper’s visit. The European talks on Ukraine follow the publication of a new US national security strategy that alarmed European leaders and was welcomed by Russia. The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the document, which spells out the administration’s core foreign policy interests, was largely in line with Moscow’s vision. The document released on Friday by the White House said the US wanted to improve its relationship with Russia after years of Moscow being treated as a global pariah and that ending the war was a core US interest to “re-establish strategic stability with Russia”. The document also said Nato must not be “a perpetually expanding alliance”, echoing another of Russia’s complaints. It was scathing about the migration and free speech policies of longstanding US allies in Europe, suggesting they face the “prospect of civilisational erasure” because of migration. Washington’s initial plan to bring an end to the almost four-year war involved Ukraine surrendering land that Russia had not been able to win on the battlefield in return for security promises that fell short of Kyiv’s aspirations to join Nato. Despite efforts from Trump and his team to push through a deal, progress in the talks has been slow, with disputes over security guarantees for Kyiv and the status of Russian-occupied territory still unresolved. Starmer has stressed repeatedly that Ukraine must determine its own future, and said a European peacekeeping force would play a “vital role” in guaranteeing the country’s security. The Russian president has not publicly expressed approval for the White House plan, and last week said aspects of Trump’s proposal were unworkable. The US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Putin at the Kremlin last week but failed to achieve an obvious breakthrough. “The American representatives know the basic Ukrainian positions,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Sunday. Trump has had a turbulent relationship with Zelenskyy since re-entering the White House, and has urged the Ukrainians repeatedly to cede land to Russia to bring an end to a conflict he says has cost far too many lives. AFP and Associated Press contributed reporting to this article

European Council president warns US not to interfere in Europe’s affairs

The president of the European Council of national leaders, António Costa, has warned Donald Trump’s administration against interfering in Europe’s affairs, as analysts said the US national security strategy represented a seismic shift in transatlantic relations. Released on Friday, the policy paper claims Europe faces “civilisational erasure” because of migration and a censorious EU “undermining political liberty and sovereignty”. Confirming not just the Trump administration’s hostility to Europe but its ambition to weaken the bloc, it says the US will “cultivate resistance” in the bloc to “correct its current trajectory”. Costa said the signal that Washington would back Europe’s nationalist parties was unacceptable. Speaking on Monday, he said there were longstanding differences with Trump on issues such as the climate crisis, but that the new strategy went “beyond that … What we cannot accept is the threat to interfere in European politics,” he said. “Allies do not threaten to interfere in the domestic political choices of their allies,” the former Portuguese prime minister said. “The US cannot replace Europe in what its vision is of free expression … Europe must be sovereign.” The strategy document was welcomed at the weekend by the Kremlin, which said it “corresponds in many ways to our vision”, while EU-US relations were strained further by a $120m (£90m) fine imposed by the EU on Elon Musk’s social media platform X. Musk said on Sunday the bloc should be “abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries”. The US deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, said the “unelected, undemocratic, and unrepresentative” EU was undermining US security. Analysts said the document codified a US strategy first outlined by JD Vance at this year’s Munich Security Conference in a speech that accused EU leaders of suppressing free speech, failing to halt illegal migration and running from voters’ true beliefs. “It transposes that doctrine into an officially backed state line,” said Nicolai von Ondarza, the head of European research at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “It really represents a fundamental shift in transatlantic relations.” Von Ondarza said that in particular, “open US backing for regime change” in Europe meant that it was “really no longer possible for EU and national European leaders to deny that US strategy towards its European allies has radically changed”. Max Bergmann, the director of the Europe, Russia, Eurasia programme at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said political meddling in Europe to back far-right nationalists was now “a core part of America’s national strategy”. Bergmann added: “This isn’t just a speech from a novice vice-president weeks into a new term. It is US policy, and they will try to implement it.” Moreover, he said, it could work: “In a fragmented political landscape, a 1-2% shift can change elections.” EU leaders “will have to confront the fact that the Trump administration is coming for them politically”, Bergmann said. “Do they just accept that Trump is funding their political downfall? Or does this begin to cause an incredible amount of friction?” Mujtaba Rahman, of the Eurasia Group risk consultancy, agreed. “The US is now officially committed, alongside Moscow, to interfering in European electoral politics to promote nationalist and anti-EU parties of the far right,” he said. He said that if the document was US policy, the first election Washington would try to influence would be Hungary’s parliamentary ballot in April next year, in which the nationalist, Moscow-friendly incumbent Viktor Orbán faces a stiff challenge. Minna Ålander of the Center for European Policy Analysis said the policy document was “actually useful. It codifies in policy, in black and white, what has been evident all year long: Trump and his people are openly hostile to Europe.” Europe’s leaders “cannot ignore or explain the fact away any more”, Ålander said. “Any hope for things to go back to the old normal looks increasingly ludicrous. Europe needs to finally seize the initiative and stop wasting time trying to manage Trump.” Nathalie Tocci, the director of Italy’s Instituto Affari Internazionale, said Europeans had “lulled themselves into the belief” that Trump was “unpredictable and inconsistent, but ultimately manageable. This is reassuring, but wrong.” The Trump administration had “a clear and consistent vision for Europe: one that prioritises US-Russia ties and seeks to divide and conquer the continent, with much of the dirty work carried out by nationalist, far-right European forces,” she said. Those forces “share the nationalist and socially conservative views championed by Maga and are also working to divide Europe and hollow out the European project”, Tocci said, arguing that flattering Trump “will not save the transatlantic relationship”. Germany’s spy chief, Sinan Selen, said on Monday he “would not draw from such a strategy document the conclusion that we should break with America”, and Jana Puglierin, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, stressed that Trump remained erratic and the document may not ultimately amount to much. However, she said, the US clearly wanted to “redefine what Europe means, to Europeans”. The aim was to somehow establish that it is “us who are the aberration, that we have somehow forgotten our true values and heritage, and that European greatness therefore needs to be restored – with the help of ‘patriotic’ parties”, Puglierin said. She said Europeans needed “to see the relationship much more pragmatically. Realise that endless flattery of Trump, promising to spend 5% of GDP on defence, or offering him breakfast with a king … is just not going to cut it.” Von Ondarza said appeasement “has not worked on trade, it hasn’t worked on security, and it won’t prevent the US supporting Europe’s far right”. “The bloc needs to articulate a strong strategy of its own.” A summit later this month would be a “decisive test of Europe’s ability to say no” to the US, he said.