As U.S. support for Ukraine falters, Europe is split over filling the gap

In Estonia there is one four-storey banner which combines the flags of Ukraine and Estonia hangs above a central square in the capital Tallinn. In Latvia Foreign Minister Krisjanis Karins is calling for allies to “immediately increase military support to Ukraine.”

And the leader of Lithuania, where President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine began a tour of the Baltic states on Wednesday, recently made an emphatic plea to help Kiev hold the line against invading Russian forces as support for Ukraine in the war elsewhere threatens to fragment in Europe.

“For all those who say they are tired of the war in Ukraine – a reminder from terrorist Russia that there are no limits to its brutality and thirst for blood,” said President Gitanas Nauseda of Lithuania. wrote on the social media platform X on December 29, hours after a Russian barrage of missiles and drones struck cities across Ukraine.

Almost nowhere is the emotional investment in Ukraine’s war efforts stronger than in the Baltic states, where the three former Soviet states declared their independence at the end of the Cold War to escape Russia’s grasp. Mr Zelensky’s trip there this week, an early diplomatic foray of 2024, comes as he tries to drum up support for his war effort from a bastion of political support, while other European countries are showing increasing fatigue and financial distress from a war that has lasted nearly two decades. started years ago. past.

Mr. Zelensky said Wednesday that his trip, which will also take him to Tallinn in Estonia and Riga in Latvia, was intended to show Ukraine’s gratitude for “its uncompromising support to Ukraine since 2014 and especially now, during Russia’s large-scale aggression.”

Pavlo Klimkin, a former foreign minister of Ukraine, said the trip was intended “to engage our friends close to us in their understanding of Russia and to push for help in DC, in Brussels, because this aid is crucial for us now.”

With additional U.S. aid in doubt — as Republicans in Congress continue to block some $61 billion in weapons and other aid — European leaders face the prospect of having to fill the gap as much as possible to maintain support As U.S. support for Ukraine falters.

But the financial withdrawal of the United States, which has provided more military aid to Ukraine than any other country, could also provide political cover for European officials who want to reduce their support for the war.

“Personally, I believe that we must act faster and more decisively to support Ukraine, because Russia represents a major strategic threat to the European Union, even if I must admit that not all Member States agree on the nature of this threat,” he said. spokesman. The European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell Fontelles, wrote in an essay this month.

He added: “Does division over this existential issue threaten the future of the European Union? It’s impossible to say at this stage.”

Experts say most European governments remain committed to helping Ukraine defeat Russia — in part to prevent President Vladimir V. Putin from ascending to power. further west with his imperialist ambitions. After Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Europe rallied around Ukraine with more unity than it showed during the Cold War against the Soviet Union, said Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow on Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

But overall support for the war effort is waning. A European Commission poll published last month showed support among Europeans for providing additional financial and military aid to Ukraine fell slightly last fall from the summer.

Even if Europe’s political support holds, Mr Gould-Davies said it will be difficult for governments to maintain the level of military and economic aid flowing into Kiev.

“Right now the real concern is not whether the West, or Europe, will continue to support Ukraine,” Gould-Davies said. “What matters is whether, in practical terms, it will continue to deploy the necessary resources, especially military.”

He called this ‘partly a factor of will and partly a factor of capacity’.

Some political cracks have already come to light.

Chief among them is Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, who last month blocked a European Union plan to send about $52 billion in aid to Ukraine. And the recently elected Prime Minister of Slovakia, and a far-right Dutch politician who wants to become the next Prime Minister of the Netherlands, have also called for cuts in aid to Ukraine.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has described “a lot of fatigue” among Ukrainian supporters during a telephone conversation in September in which she believed she was speaking to African envoys. It turned out that she had been tricked into a joke by two Russian comedians, and in a recording of the conversation released in November, Ms. Meloni stated: “We are close to the moment when everyone understands that we need a way out.”

Officials in the Baltic states, the Nordic states and Eastern Europe say they increasingly fear that divisions could lead to a near-term defeat of Ukraine, which would embolden Mr. Putin to send troops to former Soviet republics and satellite states.

“Every neighbor of Russia has good reasons to worry,” said Kalev Stoicescu, chairman of the National Defense Committee in the Estonian parliament. “Russia is literally behaving like a predator,” he said. “It tastes like blood.”

A recent report of the Estonian Ministry of Defense outlines in stark terms what it wants NATO to do to prevent this and win the war in Ukraine.

It says Ukrainian armed forces must be given enough training and firepower — at least 200,000 155-millimeter artillery shells per month — to kill or seriously wound at least 50,000 Russian troops every six months. That goes far beyond what the European Union and the United States can currently achieve together.

In Germany, officials approved Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s plans to double aid to Ukraine this year to about $8.8 billion, and a recent shipment of weapons to the war front included more air defense missiles, tank ammunition and artillery shells.

But the government has resisted sending long-range Taurus missiles that could strike Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, or deep into Russian territory. That reluctance has led some to “look at our actions with concern and wonder whether our support is enough,” as Germany’s former president Joachim Gauck said in a interview published on Sunday.

On Monday, Mr Scholz said Germany’s contributions “alone will not be sufficient to guarantee Ukraine’s long-term security.”

“The arms deliveries to Ukraine planned so far by the majority of EU member states are in any case too small,” Scholz said during a press conference with the Luxembourg prime minister. He added: “Europe must demonstrate that it stands firmly on the side of Ukraine, on the side of freedom, international law and European values.”

A coming test of Europe’s resolve, Mr. Gould-Davies said, is whether the European Union agrees to give Ukraine billions of dollars in frozen Russian central bank assets held in European financial institutions. The United States is considering similar proposals.

“That would, by the way, ease the pressure on Western taxpayers,” Mr Gould-Davies said. He said Europe must also increase production of its defense industry to arm Ukraine – a process that could take years – but noted the 12 rounds of sanctions that the bloc has imposed on Russia as a sign of continued support.

The countries of the European Union and the bloc institutions have done so collectively donated approximately $145 billion in military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine starting in October 2023 – almost twice as much as the United States received during the same period, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

This is expected to remain the case, albeit to a lesser extent.

At least for now, supporting Ukraine remains “the most important task of the Swedish government’s foreign policy in the coming years,” says Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom. said this week.

Constant Méheut And Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Kiev, Ukraine.