European Leaders Talk Ukraine, Gaza on Final Day

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report, where we come to you from an uncharacteristically quiet Sunday at the Bayerischer Hof hotel on the final day of the Munich Security Conference. The dignitaries and officials are long gone, the speeches are done, and the security barricades have been dismantled, but your SitRep co-authors are still chugging along to bring you a final special pop-up edition.

Here’s what’s on tap for the day: a “what now?” moment for Europe, a “what’s next?” moment for Ukraine, and an important conversation about Gaza.

While the Munich Security Conference has become increasingly global and hosts high-profile officials and attendees from Japan to Chile, it remains, at its core, a trans-Atlantic and largely European conference. That was very much the flavor of the gathering’s final day, which opened with a panel titled “Europeans Assemble! Reclaiming Agency in a Rougher World” followed by another titled “The European Dream(s): Defending Core Values Under Pressure.”

The panel titles were set long before U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s mixed message speech at the conference on Saturday, but they take on a greater meaning the day after as Europe gets realistic about where Washington stands.

“I agree that there is an urgent need to reclaim European agency,” Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, said in her speech introducing the first panel, where she previewed an upcoming new European security strategy that will “address all dimensions of European security.”

But first, she opened with a thinly veiled barb at some of the Trump administration’s favorite attacks against Europe. “Contrary to what some may say, woke decadent Europe is not facing civilizational erasure,” she said. “In fact, people still want to join our club—and not just fellow Europeans. When I was in Canada last year, I was told that over 40 percent of Canadians have an interest in joining the European Union, so the waiting list is quite long.”

‘An existential question.’ The country at the top of that waiting list—Ukraine—was the biggest focus of the final day, with much of the discussion focusing on the path forward for ending its war with Russia and Europe’s role in an eventual peace. “The question of how this war is going to end is actually an existential question for Europe,” said Wolfgang Ischinger, the former German ambassador to Washington who chairs the conference. “It will determine—in more ways than one—the future of this continent,” he added.

But for all the panels and speeches, no new answers seemed to emerge on how to actually end the war. The consensus among nearly all the Europeans is that, as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz put it in his speech to the conference on Friday, “Russia is not yet willing to talk seriously. … This war will only end when Russia is at least economically, potentially militarily, exhausted.” And as John reported yesterday, even U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of U.S. President Donald Trump’s closest allies in Congress, is openly saying as much. Yet Trump himself continues to insist that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants a deal.

With another round of U.S.-brokered talks between Russia and Ukraine set to take place this week in Geneva, how to resolve that disconnect remains perhaps the biggest open question of all.

We discussed some of these issues with Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna in a late Saturday evening interview at the Bayerischer Hof’s basement tiki bar, which has become something of a SitRep sanctuary over the past three days.

Tsahkna said that the reset of expectations between the United States and Europe that began at the Munich Security Conference a year ago and settled into an equilibrium this year has been like a “vaccine” for European leaders to realize that the trans-Atlantic relationship is “strong, but not unconditional.”

As a result, he added, “I see a more self-confident Europe. I see more European leaders who really understand that Putin is not stopping. It’s on Europe to put more pressure on Russia and give Ukraine more support,” Tsahkna said. “We are understanding more and more that we need Ukraine in Europe—as a security guarantee, as a military power, as an economic power, but also a power that is actually going to produce everything that we need for our defense … but of course, the war is not finished.”

When asked whether there is a disconnect between how Europe and the United States see Russia’s willingness to reach a deal, Tashina said: “I think that everybody is very pragmatic—everybody is hoping that good things may happen, but probably not, and I think mentally as well, Europe is ready to continue to support Ukraine for the long run.”

Gaza is no longer in the global spotlight in the way that it was even a few months ago, but the coastal enclave remains in crisis. The humanitarian situation is still dire, and key aspects of the peace process are stalled. To get a better picture of where things stand, SitRep sat down with Philippe Lazzarini, the commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), at the Munich Security Conference.

Lazzarini said there wasn’t enough focus on Gaza in Munich. He contributed this lack of attention to a broader shift that’s occurred since a U.S.-orchestrated cease-fire began in October, which he emphasized is a “cease-fire by name at this stage” given “nearly daily breaches” and the roughly 600 Palestinians killed from the time the truce started. (Four Israeli soldiers have been killed in Gaza during the same period.)

UNRWA has been banned by the Israeli government, and Lazzarini discussed the challenges that the agency continues to face and the pressure that it’s under. Israel has alleged that UNRWA is “infiltrated” by Hamas, which the agency categorically denies.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

SitRep: Can you paint a picture of where the humanitarian situation stands right now in Gaza?

PL: We [UNRWA] are not allowed to bring anything in. We’re totally constrained. Basically, the supplies we have outside of Gaza have been donated to other organizations to bring in. Since the cease-fire started, I would say the only real impact has been to prevent the deepening of hunger. We have reversed the famine. You still have about 100,000 people in acute food insecurity. But besides that, the bulk has been reversed.

Otherwise, life in Gaza is nothing else than just misery. It’s a daily struggle for survival. Winter has been extraordinarily harsh, and there haven’t been adequate shelters. People are queuing for hours to have access to clean water, for the basics. We are already four or five months into the cease-fire. Fundamentally, besides the famine and deep hunger dimension, there haven’t been significant changes.

SitRep: What are the challenges UNRWA faces because of the Israeli ban and other recent steps, such as the demolition of the agency’s East Jerusalem headquarters?

PL: Our agency is under a fierce, massive attack, whether operationally, politically, diplomatically, legislatively, legally, and financially—you name it. Today, we still have 12,000 staffers working in Gaza focusing on public health, primary health care, access to water, waste management, vaccination campaigns, and also in managing shelters and bringing back a learning environment for the children of Gaza.

Despite all the constraints, we are part of a community. We have the workforce, we have the expertise, and we have the community’s trust. So, these activities are not only ongoing, but they’re even expanding.

We also operate in the occupied West Bank, but we don’t operate anymore in East Jerusalem. What happened in East Jerusalem is extraordinarily outrageous, because it is based on a Knesset bill for the government to cut off electricity and water and to seize the land of all UNRWA’s premises in occupied East Jerusalem, despite two ICJ [International Court of Justice] rulings, one declaring the occupation illegal, the second one also declaring that decisions taken by Israel against agencies like UNRWA [are] illegal.

It wouldn’t be an MSC SitRep without a Mark Rutte moment. After the table-sharing awkwardness of last year, this time, we were not parties to but witnesses of another awkward moment involving the NATO secretary-general when a reporter at his Saturday roundtable mentioned that it was Rutte’s birthday. Rutte thanked the reporter but also became a little uncharacteristically bashful at the shout-out and quickly moved on to more substantive topics. “No, no. Forget it,” he said, jokingly, prompting laughter across the room.

“Frankly, I can’t imagine at this point that we are going to have a deal in 2026.”

—Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics on the prospect of a negotiated settlement between Russia and Ukraine.

72,522—we’ve decided to make this a SitRep pop-up tradition by counting our cumulative steps throughout the conference. In case you were wondering, Rishi did a few thousand steps more than John, but John says, “Work smarter, not harder.”