Strategy for Ukraine
The Economist has identified three strategic tasks for EU.
The Gaze reports on it according to the Economist.
Many expected Trump's team to sell Ukraine's sovereignty in exchange for commercial deals. The risk of such repugnant agreements now seems to have diminished somewhat. Thanks to pressure from European leaders and some sensible Republicans, notably US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, some of the worst elements of the 28-point plan developed by Whitcoff and his Kremlin buddy Kirill Dmitriev have been quietly discarded. Putin, however, does not seem enthusiastic about the current version of the peace plan. Now Trump says it is all ‘a mess.’ Diplomacy, like war, will continue.
But if European governments think they have got rid of the problem, they are mistaken. First, another bad pseudo-peace plan may emerge. Second, even if that does not happen, Ukraine will need reliable military and financial support in the near future, and that support must come from Europe. It is still unclear whether Europeans understand this.
Nothing illustrates this better than the dispute within the EU over frozen Russian assets worth around €210 billion ($245 billion), a significant portion of which is held in custody in Brussels. Last year, the G7 agreed to use interest earned on the aggressor's frozen assets to support the victim of its war. But that is not enough.
At the EU summit in October, European allies were supposed to agree on a more creative way to mobilise the assets, using some of them to secure a reparations loan for Ukraine. But Belgium wants other European countries to share the risk that Russia could sue to get its assets back. This week, the European Commission proposed a complex solution, which Belgium has so far rejected.
If Europe is unwilling or unable to use frozen assets, it must use its own balance sheet, and do so as soon as possible. This means joint borrowing: Eurobonds, strategic autonomy bonds — whatever name is politically acceptable. Ukraine needs predictable multi-year funding: a five-year package it can count on to keep its budget afloat, produce shells and rebuild its energy infrastructure. Europe's current approach, which consists of small steps, is the opposite of strategic. It forces Ukraine to live from one donor meeting to the next, encourages Putin to wait until the West gets tired, and gives ammunition to those in Trump's inner circle who argue that Europe is incapable of serious decisions.
As the Gaze reported NATO Will Purchase Weapons for Ukraine for $1 billion Under PURL Programme