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...What People Are Saying
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in March: "If Europe wants to avoid war, Europe must get ready for war. By 2030, Europe must have a strong European defense posture."
Though she recently insisted that the U.S. was still "an ally," in April she said: "The West as we knew it no longer exists."
France's President Emmanuel Macron, who has long advocated for the creation of an EU army and boosting military spending, said in January: "What will we do in Europe tomorrow if our American ally withdraws its warships from the Mediterranean? If they send their fighter jets from the Atlantic to the Pacific?"
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump described a phone call with Putin as a "good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate peace." During the phone call, he said, Putin said "he will have to respond to the recent [Ukrainian] attack on the airfields," Trump wrote on social media, without adding whether he tried to sway the Russian leader from doing so.
On June 1, Kyiv launched coordinated, long-range strikes on multiple Russian airbases thousands of miles from Ukraine which took out more than a third of Moscow's strategic cruise missile carriers.
What Happens Next
According to Hill, Putin sees the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a way toward establishing the country's dominance as a "military power in all of Europe." And the U.S., she warned, cannot be relied on at the moment to help Europe fight off this growing threat. ...
