Ukraine’s backers ready for the long haul – EURACTIV.com

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In this week’s edition: UNGA recap, Zelenskyy show and planning for the day peace comes to the Middle East.

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NEW YORK – Cracks have started showing this week in the support Ukraine has received from its biggest backers for its fight against Russia.

Over the past months, Western officials have warned to prepare for a long war in Ukraine. The US insists it will stay the course for “as long as it takes”, as US President Joe Biden has put it several times this year. Over in Europe, the UK, France, Germany and especially Eastern European allies have all used the same phrase.

Analysts point to the fact that this would depend both on the ability to provide Ukraine with enough weapons and ammunition and the political will to do so.

But Europeans have started to worry, and a fear is slowly emerging on both sides of the Atlantic, that support might not hold as fractures have emerged in what had been a largely united Western alliance behind Ukraine.

Political pre-election posturing in Poland and Slovakia, where a trade dispute with Ukraine has stirred tensions, and Republican opposition in the United States to Washington’s big spending to support Ukraine’s military have raised new uncertainties about the West’s commitment nearly 19 months into the war.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy angered his neighbours in Warsaw – a key military ally against Russia – when he told the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week that Kyiv was working to preserve land routes for its grain exports amid a Russian blockade of the Black Sea, but that “political theatre” around grain imports was helping Moscow’s cause.

Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki shot back a warning never to “insult” Poles again, an unusually harsh rhetoric towards Kyiv.

In what some observers saw as an unfortunate rather than deliberate coincidence, he later went on to say that his country is “no longer transferring any weapons to Ukraine because we are now arming ourselves with the most modern weapons.”

In the US, the political environment has shifted remarkably since Zelenskyy addressed Congress last December on his first trip out of Ukraine since the war began.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the United States has provided Kyiv with more than $43 billion worth of security assistance.

When Zelenskyy touched down in Washington earlier this week, after a stop at the United Nations, he received a much quieter reception than the hero’s welcome he was given last year from Congress.

Nevertheless, he won generally favourable comments on the next round of US aid he says he needs to stave off defeat.

A hard-right flank of Republicans, led by former Republican president Donald Trump, Biden’s current main rival in the 2024 race for the White House, is increasingly opposed to sending more money overseas. But it’s not only them.

An August CNN poll showed that a majority of Americans, 55%, say Congress should not authorise more funding for Ukraine.

The opposition is driven by a sharply polarised electorate, with 71% of Republicans opposing new funding, compared to 62% of Democrats who said they support additional funding.

At the same time, intensifying opposition to continued Ukraine funding from a faction of congressional Republicans largely aligned with Trump is threatening the next congressional approval of funding for Ukraine, after four previous rounds, delivering $113 billion in total, were smoothly approved.

The US-Ukraine aid package is expected to ultimately pass, but how much more, and for how much longer, is a question that will remain in Washington long after Zelenskyy returns to Kyiv.

Beyond financial aid, it is something that gives headaches to European diplomats. Many of them probably noticed how US President Joe Biden mentioned Ukraine only towards the end of his speech at the UN.

It’s more than certain that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who hopes to outlast Western backing for Kyiv, will be looking to capitalise if he sees Ukraine running low on air defence or other weapons.

Still, from Washington to Warsaw, where the military cost and capabilities of helping Ukraine are at issue, Western officials are playing down any talk of a rift – and are consolidating attempts to woo non-Western countries to join in and/or remain committed to the long game.

In a coordinated outreach, Europeans this week at the United Nations worked to convince non-European countries that Russia’s war on Ukraine is much more than a European war.

“We have coordinated our outreach to third countries – among all [EU] ministers – and I can tell you that, all together, we are going to have meetings with 133 partners here in New York during this week,” the EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell said.

His comments come as Kyiv’s Western allies are struggling to court countries of the Global South in the face of a changing world order.

Speaking to reporters in New York, Borrell defined the common European position as the search for “peace, but a just peace” for Ukraine, based on Zelenskyy’s peace plan, for which Europeans intend to gather “the biggest number of support” throughout the week.

But even Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Gabrelius Landsbergis, one of the staunchest supporters of Ukraine in the bloc, spoke of a visible ‘shift’ when it comes to attention spent on Russia’s war in Ukraine in New York compared to last year’s gathering.

Asked what the next steps after New York should be, Landsbergis mentioned the need to “review the strategy of support so that it leads to a Ukrainian victory”.

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EU IN THE WORLD

ZELENSKYY’S UNGA SHOW | Despite the focus on the UN’s sustainable development goals, climate and other crises, Ukraine did dominate the main centre stage in New York.

Zelenskyy made a push to win developing nations’ support, telling the United Nations General Assembly that stopping Russia’s war was necessary to focus on other pressing global problems. But while Zelenskyy’s words struck the right tone, they are less likely to lead to developing countries stepping away from their ties with Russia.

Under assembly procedures that give the microphone to presidents ahead of cabinet-level officials, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke four days after Zelenskyy and US President Joe Biden.

UN REFORM | Nevertheless, UN reform has been the biggest talk of the town in New York this year, and also over the past months as the Biden administration has been cautiously discussing reform options with other UN members.

It was again Zelenskyy who took the floor later in the week, this time for a showdown at the UN Security Council, to launch an appeal for its reform, in a nod to countries of the Global South he hoped to win over for Kyiv’s peace efforts. But he was by far not the only one.

Western UN members echoed Zelenskyy’s criticism of Russia’s veto powers in the debate, while many of them brought up the flaws in the UN’s structure week.

“Seriously, I think the past year has shown that there are fundamental changes in the international system coming and we have to start taking that into account if we want to be serious about building a future where international law counts for anything,” an African diplomat told me over coffee at the UN press bar. “It’s about time we get a seat at the table,” the diplomat added.

European Council President Charles Michel used his speech on behalf of the EU27 in New York to express support for calls to limit veto powers at the UN Security Council under emergency conditions and to broaden the body’s global representation.

However, not everyone across the EU27 is likely to rejoice. Several European diplomats expressed their surprise at the speech delivered on their behalf and the wording of some passages might have not gone down well in Paris either, which is haunted by fears (legitimate or not) of losing its seat in the long-term if reform were to happen.

“While we in general support this stance, we found the intensity and bluntness of Michel’s speech a bit surprising, also because this has not been widely and in detail discussed on the EU level,” one European diplomat told EURACTIV on the sidelines in New York.

An internal discussion on the issue might be looming as Michel in his speech proposed to host an institutional summit with the EU, UN, African Union, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The question is whether this will happen before his term runs out.

Asked whether he thinks Russia’s war on Ukraine could indeed be a catalyst for UN reform, Richard Gowan, UN director at the International Crisis Group, said the “political and procedural obstacles to reform might be too great to overcome”.

The best moment for him, Borrell said, was when the EU27 agreed on the bloc arms-sending mechanism under the European Peace Facility (EPF) for Ukraine 24 hours after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

And the worst? “There have been so many bad moments that to choose the worst is really difficult!” Borrell said, settling on his disastrous trip to Moscow and the clash with his Russian counterpart Lavrov over imprisoned Kremlin critic Navalny.

FAC ‘SOON’ | EU foreign affairs ministers are to meet in Ukraine’s war-torn capital Kyiv ‘soon’, the bloc’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell announced earlier this week. The main topics will be Ukraine’s EU integration, a show of support as the country finds itself in a critical phase of its counteroffensive against Russia and taking stock of some vital measures, such as military aid and further tightening sanctions.

NAGORNO-KARABAKH | Armenia and Azerbaijan clashed at the United Nations over Baku’s military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh earlier this week, with UN Security Council members calling for peace in the breakaway enclave. The EU earlier this week called for restraint in the conflict, largely seen as a major diplomatic setback for the EU, which has been courting Azerbaijan as an ally and alternative gas supplier to Russia.

MIDDLE EAST PEACE | The EU’s plans to help lead a new ‘incentives’-focused Middle East peace initiative, aimed at re-starting talks between Israel and Palestine, Sven Koopmans, the bloc’s special envoy for the Middle East Peace Process, told Euractiv.

Almost 50 foreign ministers from Europe and the Middle East met on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly this week to unveil a new initiative, dubbed the ‘Peace Day Effort’, which aims to revive the long-dormant peace process between Israel and Palestine.

DEFENCE CORNER

TANK PROJECT | French and German defence ministers have vowed to accelerate the development of the future joint battle tank after years of slow progress and rumours of Berlin’s withdrawal from the project.

BEYOND UKRAINE | Spanish Defence Minister Margarita Robles urged EU countries to enhance the bloc’s security relationship with Africa and the Indo-Pacific in an attempt to restore its global approach, skewed by the war in Ukraine.

ENLARGEMENT LATEST

FRANCO-GERMAN PUSH| A Franco-German expert report on how to best reform the EU to prepare it for the accession of future members was submitted to European affairs ministers this week. It comes only a few weeks ahead of a crucial month that will see several key debates and a European Commission assessment on enlargement that could change the course of the bloc.

BELGRADE-PRISTINA | Kosovo and Serbia “risk losing opportunities for progressing on their European paths” if they do not implement the EU-brokered agreements, the EU warned this week, doubling down amid a diplomatic fallout of the latest round of talks.

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