US President Donald Trump’s “lengthy and highly productive” phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin has sparked fears in Europe of a “dirty deal” being struck to end the war in Ukraine on terms favorable to Moscow without Kyiv’s involvement.

President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday said Ukraine would not accept a peace deal negotiated by the United States and Russia alone. He conceded it was “not pleasant” that Trump spoke with Putin before calling Kyiv, calling into doubt the West’s policy of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” that has largely held over three years of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, warned against a “quick fix” and a “dirty deal” to end the war, saying that Europe and Ukraine must be at the table for talks because no peace deal can be implemented without their involvement.

For European members of NATO the future suddenly looks a whole lot more uncertain. Since the foundation of the alliance, Europe has relied on the American nuclear umbrella, the deployment of sizable US military contingents in Europe and the vast US defense budget and weapons pipeline.

Trump’s call with Putin, and his subsequent announcement that negotiations would begin immediately on reaching a deal in Ukraine, blindsided European leaders and threatened to leave them with the grunt work of funding and overseeing any settlement.

In other words: Washington will do the deal (and may get paid in rare earth minerals by Ukraine as Trump has demanded), and Europe will pick up the tab.

Newly minted US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told NATO allies in Brussels that European and non-European troops – but not Americans – would have to police any agreement between Ukraine and Russia. There was also a brutal denial of Ukraine’s aspirations to join the alliance. Hegseth said Washington did “not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome.”

A NATO official subsequently briefed that “NATO membership is not necessarily something that needs to be negotiated with Russia. It’s something that’s a decision for allies and that decision has been linked to when the time is right.”

The official insisted that “the alliance’s position has not changed and Ukraine is still on a path to membership.”

‘Any deal behind our backs will not work’

The Europeans, both in NATO and in the EU – are struggling to be heard as Trump focuses on doing a deal with Putin to end what he has called the pointless bloodshed in Ukraine.

Kallas said that “any deal behind our backs will not work.” She added that “appeasement also always, always fails. So Ukraine will continue to resist and Europe will continue to back Ukraine.”

The allies have been fond of the mantra “No settlement in Ukraine without Ukraine.” That might now be expanded to “…without Ukraine and Europe.” Six European governments, including France, the UK and Germany, said Wednesday night in a panicked joint statement: “We are looking forward to discussing the way ahead together with our American allies.… Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations.”

Šakalienė and her Baltic counterparts, on Russia’s borders, are especially anxious at the turn of events. She said there was a stark choice: “Whether we decide to fall under the illusion that Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin are going to find a solution for all of us, and that would be a deadly trap, or we will, as Europe, embrace our own economic, financial and military capacity.”

Šakalienė acknowledged that historically the US had been “paying for our security. And that needs to be corrected.”

Her Estonian counterpart, Hanno Pevkur, cited the poet Alexandre Dumas – “One for all, all for one” – as the bedrock of the transatlantic relationship, and also spoke of raising defense spending.

Flat-footed

But production lines, investment in new technology and recruitment do not happen overnight. There’s been intense talk since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began of ramping up defense industries in Europe. But that’s a multi-year process.

The head of French defense giant Dassault, Éric Trappier, said last year that “Europe believes all of a sudden that working on defence is a good thing… Between that realisation and the reality of building a European defense industry it’s going to take many years and even many decades,” he told the Financial Times.

Those words were echoed Thursday by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. “We are not producing enough and this is a collective problem…. Russia is producing in three months in ammunition, but the whole of the alliance is producing in a year.”

European weapons manufacturers have also complained about arcane decision-making processes in Brussels, where the European Commission has angled for a much greater role in procurement.

And this sudden increase in spending is expected at a time of sluggish growth and tight public finances.

The events of 1989, when the Soviet bloc evaporated, left a legacy of defense cutbacks in the West that are only now being reversed.

Together, as Zelensky noted this week, Ukraine and Europe have fewer men under arms than Russia. Zelensky is doubtful that Europe or another monitoring force alone is up to the task of securing any peace. “I don’t think any UN troops or anything like that have ever really helped anyone,” he told the Guardian this week. “We are for a (peacekeeping) contingent if it is part of security guarantees, and I would underline again that without America this is impossible.”

With Hegseth saying there is no way the US will commit troops to some sort of 1,000-kilometer long demilitarized zone stretching from the Black Sea to Kharkiv, there is no clarity over what those guarantees might be. Zelensky said Thursday that rather than a contingent of maybe 5,000 peacekeepers, there would need to be 100,000 as part of a “deterrent package.”

Some European ministers fear that Trump fatally misunderstands Putin. German defense minister Boris Pistorius said Thursday he regretted the new administration taking Ukraine’s prospective membership of NATO off the table immediately and added: “Putin is constantly provoking the West and attacking us again. It would be naive to believe the threat would actually diminish after such a peace agreement.”

Their next chance for allies to temper – or at least interrogate – the administration’s strategy will be at this weekend’s Munich Security conference, to be attended by US Vice-President JD Vance and Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg.

Europe sidelined?

Europeans may now be forgiven for glancing backwards to existential moments in their modern history.

One is the Munich agreement of 1938 that gave Hitler free rein to continue Nazi aggression against allies that were neither armed nor ready for war against a fully militarized society.

The other is the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 that suppressed the Prague Spring, an effort at liberalization that threatened Moscow’s dominance of Eastern Europe, just as Ukraine’s sharp tilt to the EU was seen as a threat by Putin.

At that time, US Senator Henry Jackson told NATO parliamentarians that while there was little disagreement in the US about the value of the Atlantic Alliance, there was “a widespread feeling in my country that so many Europeans were less concerned with the security of their homelands than we were.

“To many Americans it has seemed that a prosperous Western Europe was not making a reasonably proportionate contribution to the common defense effort,” Jackson said. “I am convinced that the future vitality of the alliance depends in very large measure on the degree and quality of European efforts to keep NATO strong.”

Fast forward half a century and the demands of the Trump administration that European members of NATO, many of which have struggled to reach a defense spending target of 2% of GDP, are now expected to hit 4 or 5% – (a level higher even than the US) and step beyond that security umbrella.

Daniella Gilboa has wasted no time in putting the joy back into her life after being released from 15 months in captivity in Gaza. She got engaged to her longtime boyfriend and sang at a party when she and other freed hostages left the hospital.

But Orly knows that what she is seeing in these first days after Daniella’s release is just the surface. “There are a lot of things under and I’m sure that we can see them when the days go by.”

It’s the same for Naama Levy and Liri Albag, released alongside Daniella on January 25, their mothers said. They appear physically healthy, and they are home. But they were imprisoned in Gaza for 477 days and free less than three weeks, so much of their recovery is yet to come.

“She’s back in her room,” Ayelet Levy Shachar said of her daughter and her girly pink bedroom complete with soft toys. “Although she does prefer to sleep with her mom at night.”

Naama, Liri and Daniella were all in their teens on October 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters stormed their outpost at Kibbutz Nahal Oz near the border with Gaza.

They were performing their mandatory military service as unarmed “spotters,” tasked with looking at activity inside Gaza and reporting back to commanders at another base.

Fifteen of their fellow spotters were killed in the surprise militant attack on communities and a music festival that left 1,200 Israelis dead and 250 kidnapped in the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. The Israeli war on Hamas that followed has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, injured twice as many and leveled much of Gaza.

Daniella, Liri and Naama were captured with four more young women: Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Ori Megidish and Noa Marciano. Ori was rescued weeks after the attack, while Noa was killed in Gaza. Karina was also released on January 25, while Agam was freed five days later.

Video taken by Hamas on October 7 and later released by the women’s families showed the female soldiers being lined up against a wall by men with rifles. Their hands were bound behind them, and they were ordered to sit, many still in their pajamas, their faces and bodies spattered with blood.

On the day of the attack, with no word from Naama, Ayelet had first thought maybe her daughter was just unable to reach her in the chaos. But then she saw a video of Naama being dragged by her hair, her pants covered in blood, and being shoved into a vehicle.

And unknown to her, her daughter saw it too.

“She saw the video, she knew about it, and she did see myself and her father in different interviews,” Ayelet said. “She heard sometimes on the radio her brother speaking, her grandfather speaking. It wasn’t an everyday thing, but sometimes she was exposed to the media, and it did give her a lot of strength and support and helped her throughout those days.

“She waited to catch a glimpse of one of us. She told me even that she was following with the color of my hair during this time,” Ayelet added with a laugh.

Naama was wounded by shrapnel that day. Some she was later able to pick out of her skin; the rest remains in her body, Ayelet said.

Naama and Liri had only arrived at the outpost a couple of days before the attack, but Daniella had already been there nine months, her mom said.

Orly knows Daniella was hit in the leg that day, but much else is still unknown.

Orly Gilboa, the mother of freed hostage Daniella, is treading carefully with her daughter, letting her speak about what happened when she is ready.

Orly, like so many friends and relatives of the hostages, worked to keep the names and photos of those captured in the news.

“October 7 is the most hard thing for her to speak about, and I don’t ask her about it,” Orly said. “She didn’t tell me yet about what happened that day. I just know that she lost a lot of her good friends … The loss of them is very hard for her, even more than the period of time of the captivity … I assume that in a few days or a few months, she’ll decide to talk about it, and she will tell me about it herself. I don’t want to make any pain for her.”

The mothers have learned a little about the conditions their girls, all now 20 years old, were kept in.

Shira Albag said Liri was held with Agam Berger, and sometimes Naama.

“Liri most of the time was in apartments with civilians,” she said. “It was difficult because they needed to do some things for the people of the house — to clean the house and to cook for them and to sit with the children and try to teach them English or play with them.”

Despite the physical closeness, there was little human kindness. “They didn’t treat them nice,” she said of the captors.

Amit Soussana, a woman freed in November 2023, has credited Liri for saving her life. She said the militants were convinced she was in the Israeli military and tied her up and beat her as they demanded a confession. At one point, other hostages were brought in to pressure her. Instead, Liri spoke to the guard and persuaded the captors that Amit was not a soldier.

“It seems like Liri, but I heard this story from Amit. Liri didn’t tell us yet the story,” Shira said. “I know it was very difficult for her. She saved Amit’s life. But when Liri will be ready, she will tell the story herself.”

Liri, Daniella and Naama were, along with Karina Ariev, the second group of hostages to be released under the first phase of the ceasefire deal. In a highly choreographed handover, they were paraded on a stage, dressed in olive-green military style outfits, and given certificates about their release and “gift bags” including souvenir keychains.

Their release was in marked contrast to the chaotic first handover of the 2025 truce and they seemed healthier than the three pale, emaciated men freed on Saturday.

Daniella watched that last release with her mother and talked about the condition of one of the men — her cousin Eli Sharabi.

“Daniella told me, ‘Mama, just know that if we were released two months ago, I looked like Eli’ because she also lost a lot of weight there,” Orly said. A change happened two or three months ago when Daniella and Karina were separated from other captives. And instead of four of them having to share one plate of food, then it was just two.

“It’s important to understand that we see Daniella, how she looks like right now, it doesn’t mean anything about what happened there and how she felt there.”

Hamas and its allies still hold a total of 73 people — some believed to be dead — taken from Israel during the October 7 attacks. Three additional hostages, held captive since 2014, are also still in Gaza.

Ayelet took time to thank US President Donald Trump for getting the ceasefire deal done and allowing the release of hostages. The terms of the deal map closely to an agreement then-President Joe Biden unveiled last May but could not complete.

Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister until November, told Israel’s Channel 12 News earlier this month that Hamas had agreed to that deal in July, but Israel did not go along with it.

“Unfortunately, there are fewer hostages still alive now, more time has passed, and we are paying a heavier price,” he said.

Ayelet echoed that sentiment. “They could have been home sooner. They should have been home sooner,” she said.

The drive and passion shown by the families and much of Israel over nearly 500 days to get the hostages freed is ramping up to a new urgency as the truce — and hope for more releases — hangs by a thread.

“We need to see them all home now,” Ayelet said.

Last year was the deadliest for journalists in more than three decades, with the majority killed in the Middle East, according to a report released Wednesday by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

At least 124 journalists and media workers were killed in 2024, the most recorded since the CPJ began collecting data three decades ago.

Nearly 70% of those deaths were at the hands of the Israeli military in Gaza and Lebanon, the report said, with 82 Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces denied targeting media workers, saying it “takes all operationally feasible measures to mitigate harm to civilians including journalists.”

Last year’s death toll exceeded the previous record in 2007, when 113 journalists were killed, almost half of them amid the US-led war in Iraq.

“The war in Gaza is unprecedented in its impact on journalists and demonstrates a major deterioration in global norms on protecting journalists in conflict zones, but it is far from the only place journalists are in danger,” the committee’s CEO Jodie Ginsberg said in a statement.

It accused Israel of being “slow and not transparent” in its inquiries into soldiers’ killings of journalists, of shifting blame to the victims and ignoring its duty to hold its military to account.

After Gaza and Lebanon, the report identified Sudan and Pakistan as the deadliest places for journalists, with six media workers killed in each last year. Mexico, Syria, Myanmar, Iraq and Haiti also had multiple killings of journalists in 2024.

“The number of conflicts globally – whether political, criminal, or military in nature – has doubled in the past five years, and this is reflected in the high number of deaths of journalists in nations such as Sudan, Pakistan, and Myanmar,” the CPJ said, citing data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) monitoring initiative.

Targeted killings on the rise

The CPJ report said at least 24 journalists worldwide had been killed deliberately because of their work over the past year, describing this as “an alarming rise in the number of targeted killings.”

Among them was Ismail Al-Ghoul, a 27-year-old Palestinian journalist, who was killed alongside his cameraman, Rami Al-Rifi, in an Israeli airstrike on Al-Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza last July, sparking condemnation from advocacy groups.

In the immediate aftermath of Al-Ghoul’s killing, his employer, Al Jazeera, denied what it called “baseless allegations made by the Israeli occupation forces in an attempt to justify its deliberate killing of our colleague, journalist Ismail Al-Ghoul, and his companion, cameraman Rami Al-Rifi.”

The IDF has rarely provided specific answers about the circumstances that led to the killing of journalists. Instead, the Israeli military has issued vague statements that reiterate their forces do not intentionally target journalists or that the matter is under investigation.

Trapped in the strip alongside their fellow Gaza residents, Palestinian reporters have been the eyes and ears of those suffering under the shadow of war. And with foreign media largely unable to enter, it is their photos, footage and reporting, often gathered at great personal risk, that have shown the world what is happening.

The committee said 10 journalists were deliberately killed by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon. The 14 other journalists whose deaths it determined were deliberate were from Haiti, Mexico, Pakistan, Myanmar, Mozambique, India, Iraq, and Sudan.

Failures to protect press

The report highlighted the ongoing failures to protect journalists and media workers, especially freelancers, in countries with consistently high rates of killings.

It cited the killing of a veteran journalist, Alejandro Martínez Noguez, who was shot last August in Mexico while under police protection as an example of the “persistent flaws” in the country’s mechanisms meant to protect journalists.

“The death tolls in Mexico, Pakistan, India, and Iraq reinforced the extreme dangers journalists face in these nations, which have experienced repeated killings over multiple decades despite numerous efforts in some of these countries, including at the national level, to address this,” the report said.

Freelancers, it said, were killed at an “unprecedented rate” last year. A total of 43 were killed, more than a third of all media worker deaths, the majority of which were Palestinians in Gaza.

“The typical freelancer frequently works alone, without staffers’ access to protective equipment, security guards, insurance for medical treatment, or benefits that would help surviving family members,” the report said.

It called on governments, international institutions and media organizations to ensure accountability for threats and attacks against journalists and to provide media workers with the necessary support to do their work.

“Every journalist killed is the loss of a truth-teller. Those who chronicle our reality and hold power to account deserve justice. We will not stop seeking it,” the committee said in a post on X.