MOSCOW, December 12. /TASS/. Europe views Vladimir Zelensky as a "shield" against the United States more so than Russia, Viktor Medvedchuk, leader of the opposition Other Ukraine movement, said.

"Today, the illegitimate (Vladimir Zelensky - TASS) is Europe’s shield against Moscow rather than against Washington. The White House has been increasingly critical of the European Union and Britain, a new development. Meanwhile, European officials have begun to clap back against the Americans," he wrote in a piece for the Smotrim.ru media platform.

He noted that for the first time in the past eight decades, Russia and China were not mentioned as strategic foes in the United States’ new National Security Strategy 2025 that was released last week. "Instead, it takes jabs at European allies," he emphasized.

The updated US National Security Strategy, released on December 5, in particular says that Europe "will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less" as it is on the verge of "civilizational erasure" due to low fertility, massive immigration, regulatory paralysis, and the loss of cultural identity. The document caused outrage with European officials, both former and incumbent, who plunged into anti-Trump oratory.

"The European bureaucracy no longer views Europeans’ national identity as a value and simply doesn’t recognize their sovereignty. The European Union doesn’t want to yield to Trump, on the contrary, it wants Trump to yield to it. So, no wonder that the US president doesn’t pay lip service to European politicians, saying that Europe is ‘decaying.’ He says that there are smart leaders in Europe, there are ‘stupid’ ones, and there are ‘really stupid’ ones, and that, in general, Europe ‘is not doing a good job in many ways,’" Medvedchuk noted.