Lasting peace. This is the idea that was repeated by everyone before, during and after the Munich Security Conference (14-16 February). But how to achieve it increasingly divides Europe and the US.

Donald Trump's announcement just last week that he had agreed with Vladimir Putin to open negotiations outside Europe caused shockwaves among many leaders, who saw his move as a false end to a war in which Russia must be held accountable for an illegal invasion of Ukraine that has killed tens of thousands and displaced more than 4.2 million refugees.

“Lasting peace” is also the wish of Ruslan Maliuta, a Christian leader from Ukraine who co-founded the NGO World Without Orphans. “This is what I pray and hope for, alongside millions of fellow Ukrainians”. 

However, “I don’t see how negotiations with Putin could lead to it, regardless of what might be agreed upon or signed”, he told Evangelical Focus.

“Over the past 20 years, I’ve witnessed and experienced firsthand how Putin and his regime have sought to control and eventually destroy Ukraine with the support of most of people in Russia”. 

This goal remains unchanged, says Maliuta, and therefore “there is no reason to believe that Putin will honour any agreements”. 

It is now three years since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, despite describing warnings that it would do so as lies of the Western propaganda.

A “decisive period for the future of Europe”

Maliuta believes “this is a decisive period for the future of Ukraine and Europe, and perhaps the whole world. The only path to lasting peace in Europe is a change of the Russian regime—a new government that would reverse the current direction and prioritize human life and well-being, including that of their own citizens”.

For him and many other Ukrainian evangelical Christians, “it has become clear that Europe must take primary responsibility for resolving this crisis. Supporting Ukraine in every possible way is an essential and non-negotiable element of that solution”.

He concludes: “I’m stating what is painfully obvious to me. Analysing the situation, I find no basis for a positive scenario. So, I pray for a miracle”.

The new scenario, as seen from Romania

Daniel Farcas, a philosophy lecturer in Romania, followed what was said at the Munich Conference closely. He told Evangelical Focus US’ vice president J.D. Vance’s words in Germany made him feel “confused”.

“From a rhetorical point of view, it was an excellent speech; it was a speech on values, more than a speech on security; and it was a speech on the EU internal challenges, and not a speech on the Russo-Ukrainian conflict”, Farcas analyses.

At the end, there was the message that “the US will manage the war in Ukraine in the American way (...) the US do not see EU as a reliable partner in solving the crisis in Ukraine”.

Vance may have said in Munich that the US and Europe “are on the same team” as NATO allies. But Farcas read between the lines a potential “farewell message the United States wanted to convey to its (former?) ally”.

Farcas points to a “a stunning paradox” in Donald Trump’s approach to foreign affairs. The new president of the US “promotes a Realpolitik-style diplomacy”, in other words, a “diplomacy of interest, not of values (as Henry Kissinger pointed out)”. This transactional approach to the rest of the world may have been expected “but it does not align with the advocacy for values that won Trump the evangelical electorate”.

“Do you know how ‘America First’ sounds in Sartre's language?", concludes Farcas. He answers: “L'enfer c'est les autres (Hell is everyone else). But who are the others? Ukraine? The countries of the European Union? Canada? Denmark, with its Greenland?”