Trump’s sliding Ukraine deadline

 

Trump’s sliding Ukraine deadline

By Sarah Wheaton

15 mins read

January 10, 2025 7:00 am CET

https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/brussels-playbook/trumps-sliding-ukraine-deadline/

Brussels Playbook

By SARAH WHEATON

with ZOYA SHEFTALOVICH

 

HOWDY. You made it to Friday! Sarah Wheaton here with you for this edition of Brussels Playbook. We spent last night listening to Elon Musk’s interview with the AfD leader, and with zero regard to politics, we’d watch an Alice Weidel talk show after hearing her probe the world’s richest man on his ambitions to populate Mars, whether he believes in God and how to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. (The latter went unaddressed, though he did say he believes peace is possible.) For the other key/crazy/political moments, Tim Ross and Nette Nöstlinger have you covered.

 

PLANTING A FLAG: Commission trade spox Olof Gill has a “personal reflection on the 2025 news cycle so far,” posting a video Thursday evening of himself saying: “Just as a general point, let’s dial it down a bit here. I mean, we’re talking about fairly wild hypothetical stuff.”

 

Not hypothetical: This video will haunt Gill mercilessly if any of this week’s hypotheticals come to pass.

 

Also not hypothetical: Nick Vinocur takes the reins of Monday’s Brussels Playbook.

 

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DRIVING THE DAY: BREATHING ROOM FOR UKRAINE? 

TRUMP TIMELINE SLIPS: Behind U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s bellicosity on Greenland (you know we’re gonna have more on that below), his Russia-Ukraine war deadline math is getting increasingly fuzzy. Gone is the notion of ending the war in 24 hours — he’s now talking months.

 

EXHIBIT A — “Long before six months”: “I hope to have six months,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago press conference Tuesday, before adding: “I hope long before six months.”

 

EXHIBIT B — “Near term”: Keith Kellogg, the Trump pick for Ukraine and Russia special envoy, told Fox News he expects Kyiv and Moscow to arrive at a “solvable solution in the near term.” What does near term mean? His “goal,” Kellogg continued, would be to “set it at 100 days.”

 

You just don’t understand: “I think what people need to understand — he’s not trying to give something to Putin or to the Russians. He’s actually trying to save Ukraine and save their sovereignty,” Kellogg added.

 

EXHIBIT C — Brussels breathes: The Financial Times cites two European officials who say their conversations with the Trump team “revealed they had not yet decided on how to solve the conflict.”

 

EXHIBIT D — Meloni’s mellow: Abandoning Ukraine at this point “would be an error,” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni told reporters in a rare press conference Thursday. And here’s the thing about Meloni: She has zero interest in picking a public fight with Trump on this issue, so if this is what she’s saying publicly, her spidey sense must be telling her she’s on safe ground. My colleague Hannah Roberts rounds up the key moments from Meloni’s press conference here, and keep scrolling for context on our spidey sense reference.

 

Meloni also reiterated her support to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, when he popped down to Rome after meeting with other allies in Germany Thursday, Hannah reports.

 

TRUMP TO PUTIN — LET’S TALK: Trump said on Thursday that a meeting was being set up between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin, though he didn’t say when. “He wants to meet, and we are setting it up,” Trump said at Mar-a-Lago. Reuters write-up here.

 

NOW READ THIS: Spiegel last night reported that German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius want to mobilize an additional €3 billion for urgently needed additional arms deliveries to Ukraine before next month’s German election — but the chancellery is blocking the move.

 

ABOUT THAT GREENLAND GAMBIT: If Trump really wanted to use force to claim Greenland, it would be “the shortest war in the world,” Laura Kayali and Hanne Cokelaere report.

 

But he might regret winning it. The maintenance burden for the gigantic, sparsely populated island might make it a pretty bad deal — especially since Washington can already freeload on the status quo, Koen Verhelst and Jakob Weizman explain.

 

Now read this: U.S. and Danish officials last year pressed Tanbreez Mining, the developer of Greenland’s largest rare earths deposit, to not sell its cash-strapped project to Chinese-linked firms, Reuters reports. It was ultimately sold to New York-based Critical Metals.

 

RACE FOR FACE TIME 

VDL TO TRUMP: CALL ME, MAYBE? European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is trying to score a meeting with Trump ahead of his inauguration 10 days from now, Bloomberg scoops. It’s not going well — not least because she’s stuck in her home town of Hanover with severe pneumonia. (On that note, the Commission finally acknowledged that the show might need to go on without her if she’s not ready to come back soon. Commission EVP Teresa Ribera will lead next week’s meeting of commissioners if von der Leyen can’t.)

 

Settling for synchronized tweets: Under pressure for failing to respond to Trump’s implicit threat to invade a Danish territory, von der Leyen and Council President António Costa sent out identical posts on X Thursday evening (during Musk’s Weidel interview).

 

The message: “The US is one of our closest partners and we are committed to strengthening the Transatlantic bond,” their messages said, while adding: “The EU will always protect our citizens and the integrity of our democracies and freedoms.”

 

Playbook thought bubble: If the U.S. is just “one of” the EU’s closest partners, who is No. 1?

 

Let’s be clear: Von der Leyen wasn’t tweeting from her sick bed — the initiative was cooked up by their cabinets. EU leaders told Costa they wanted to take a cautious approach to the incoming administration at their last summit, and this is what that looks like.

 

TRUMP PREPPERS: The FT reports this morning that senior Commission officials have ordered a review of outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden’s executive orders amid concern Trump will nix them when he takes office.

 

MELONI CHANNELS SPIDER-MAN: About that spidey sense … The Italian prime minister already scored a Mar-a-Lago audience, a factor that only affirmed POLITICO’s assessment that she’ll be the most influential player in Europe in 2025. Asked about her POLITICO 28 ranking during Thursday’s press conference, Meloni replied: “As Spider-Man would say, with great power comes great responsibility.” (More here from Hannah Roberts, along with a perfect photo choice by POLITICO’s production desk.)

 

HOW NOT TO GET IN TRUMP’S GOOD GRACES: U.K. Finance Minister Rachel Reeves (POLITICO 28 No. 6 Doer) is taking a gamble with her visit to Beijing this weekend, risking Trump’s wrath as she seeks cash and investment for the British economy, Hannah Brenton and Dan Bloom report.

 

WHO’LL XI SEND TO D.C.? China’s President Xi Jinping will send a high-level envoy to Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, in a move the FT reports is designed to reduce friction. Per the FT, Beijing is considering Han Zheng, a vice president, or Foreign Minister Wang Yi, but some Trump advisers want the more-powerful Cai Qi.

 

 

MORE MUSK 

ELON’S STAN IN PARLIAMENT: Fidias Panayiotou, the YouTube prankster-turned-MEP, has invariably entertained and infuriated the Brussels establishment with his wide-eyed videos aiming to explain the European Parliament and his propensity to put big political questions up to a vote by his social media followers. Yet gone are the days when Panayiotou let his followers decide if he should join the Greens. (No, they said, remain unattached.)

 

Mutual admiration: Increasingly, Panayiotou is taking positions that echo or match Elon Musk’s views, becoming one of the X-owner’s closest allies in the Parliament. No wonder Musk endorsed him for “EU President.” Max Griera and Eliza Gkritsi have this must-read look at the political education of a viral influencer.

 

PLENARY DEBATE ON MUSK AND META: Four European Parliament groups (EPP, S&D, Renew, the Greens) have called for a plenary debate on how the Commission plans to enforce the Digital Services Act in the wake of Musk’s political meddling and Meta’s content moderation overhaul — enough to all but guarantee that the Parliament’s political leaders will opt to put it on the agenda. Commission Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen has been invited to meet with those leaders on Wednesday to discuss these issues, a Parliament official said.

 

Right wants censorship investigation: Meanwhile, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg’s move to abandon fact-checking in the U.S. on free speech grounds “confirmed what we have been saying about this for a long time,” MEP Tom Vandendriessche, member of the Belgian far-right Flemish Interest party, told POLITICO’s Pieter Haeck. Flemish Interest is part of the Patriots for Europe group in the Parliament, which is urging a committee to investigate censorship under the EU’s tech regs. More for Pro Tech subscribers here.

 

LISTEN UP — BLOVIATOR-IN-CHIEF: For former MEP Marietje Schaake, Musk’s political meddling is just a small part of Europe’s subordination to Silicon Valley, as described in her book “The Tech Coup.” She joins the University of Copenhagen’s Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and yours truly on this week’s episode of the EU Confidential podcast to discuss the political trade-offs of free speech. Plus, we have a new reason to stick to your new year’s resolution: sweatworking. Listen here.

 

HUFFING AND PUFFING ABOUT RUSSIAN GAS 

FICO’S BRUSSELS FIASCO: Robert Fico casts a long shadow. At almost 190cm, the bodybuilding Slovak prime minister stormed onto the stage in the EU capital on Thursday to demand the bloc help his country plug a billion-euro black hole in its budget that opened up when Ukraine shut off the flow of Russian gas, Gabriel Gavin writes in to report.

 

Winning: Furious Fico had demanded a meeting with Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen over the issue, which he accuses officials of doing nothing to help resolve. And, on Thursday, Fico used the sit-down to blast the Dane into agreeing to set up a special working group to manage the cut-off. What that means isn’t yet clear, and officials are tight-lipped on what options are on the table.

 

Damp reception: But the optics of the visit weren’t entirely smooth. Fico’s plane was delayed landing in Brussels because of a mini-blizzard. Then his meeting with Jørgensen ran over time, meaning he was more than an hour late to meet the bubble media at a press conference. Just as well, because someone spilled a glass of water on the table where he would be sitting, prompting a major cleanup operation by diplomatic staff.

 

Charm offensive: And, when he did show up to the sit-down at Slovakia’s permanent representation, he spoke uninterrupted Slovak for more than 90 minutes — without translation — before taking two questions from local media and dodging foreign reporters on the way out. Fortunately, that was no obstacle for Ketrin Jochecová; her piece with Gabriel is here.

 

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