Luxembourg MEP Fernand Kartheiser has sent a letter to Donald Trump praising the US president’s recent actions, despite widespread alarm across Europe at moves in the White House over Ukraine.

The ADR politician, who won his party’s first-ever seat at the European Parliament in June last year, published the letter – sent on headed European Parliament paper – on Elon Musk’s X platform on Wednesday.

It came just days after a public spat in the White House between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and the US decision to scrap both military aid to Kyiv and intelligence sharing with the country’s forces.

Kartheiser expressed his “heartfelt gratitude” to Trump for his “steadfast commitment to peace”, the MEP wrote, adding that he fully endorses his efforts “to normalise relations with the Russian Federation”.

Kartheiser said he feels that he has been treated unfairly for expressing similar views to the US President, who has been accused of adopting Moscow’s narrative over Ukraine, the country it launched a full-scale invasion of back in 2022.

“Parliamentarians from across the political spectrum have sought to discredit that position, accusing me of colluding with Russia,” he told Trump. “Meanwhile, the media in my country have uniformly adopted a militant, pro-war stance – a development I find particularly troubling,” Kartheiser added.

Kartheiser sits with the ECR grouping in the European Parliament, which contains populist and far-right parties such as Brothers of Italy, the party led by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party, which was embroiled in regular disputes with the EU over its rule-of-law record during its time in government in Warsaw.

However, at the end of last year, Kartheiser faced censure from the ECR over an interview he gave to pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia in December. The Russian media outlet is on the EU’s sanctions list.

In a letter to the Luxemburger Wort in January, Robert Mehlen, honorary president of the ADR party, added his voice to criticism of Kartheiser’s stance on Russia.

(This article was first published by the Luxemburger Wort. Translation, editing and adaptation by Tracy Heindrichs)