Under intense military pressure and fearing the eventual loss of more territory to Russia, Ukraine began the week with political defeats among its allies in the West. And gave receipt of the situation.
“Europe must show strength. All quarrels in Europe must end, they are internal disputes that only encourage Russia to put more pressure on you,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video recorded for a European Council session on Monday. (30).
He did not speak directly, but was referring to the EU’s indecision over an embargo on Russian oil purchases — the European Commission calculated in April that Vladimir Putin was paid around €1 billion a day selling hydrocarbons to the continent.
European leaders want to reach an agreement on the issue by the summit of the 27-nation bloc on June 23 and 24, seeking to accommodate the position of those opposed to a veto, such as Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. A two-day meeting that began this Monday in Brussels will try to settle differences.
According to a draft agreement that circulated among international news agencies, the way out to please the Hungarians, Czechs and Slovaks is to veto only purchases through oil tankers, leaving the pipelines that bring most of the product exempt. Orbán, upon arriving in Brussels, said the deal would be acceptable, but he again said that vetoing Russian oil is “an atomic bomb for our economy.”
Even the arrangement is not right, according to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. This cut would remove about 2/3 of Russian crude from the mainland, but there are doubts about the ability to replace it from other sources – Moscow accounts for 27% of imports of the product.
The Germans, the main target in Kiev for accusations of leniency towards Vladimir Putin’s war due to their dependence on gas bought from Russia, are leaning towards the Solomonic solution. “There will be a deal,” Prime Minister Olaf Scholz said.
The authorities of the largest European economy are the main realists of the process. Chancellor Annalena Baerbock has already pointed to the “moment of fatigue” in the West with the war, despite everyone maintaining support for Kiev, which has been under attack for three months.
In addition to the Germans, the French are also seen as indirect supporters of Putin: President Emmanuel Macron said last week that Ukraine’s entry into the EU would be a decades-long process, if that.
In Kiev, Chancellor Dmitro Kuleba complained about this after receiving French colleague Catherine Colonna. “We need a legal statement that Ukraine is part of the European integration project,” he said, calling for some special membership program.
One of the Russian reasons for the war was to keep Ukraine militarily neutral, as a buffer between NATO (Western military alliance) and the territory of Moscow. However, throughout the conflict, the eventual membership of the EU was also considered unacceptable by the Kremlin.
There is the political and military component, of course, but also the fear that Ukraine would be transformed into a Slavic showcase of the EU, West Berlin-style in the Cold War, suggesting a prosperity and democracy that could inspire opponents of Putin’s regime.
The second brought bad news for Zelensky, also coming from Washington, capital where the drums of war resound stronger in favor of the Ukrainians. After reports emerged that the US could approve the deployment of long-range multiple rocket launcher systems to the Ukrainians, President Joe Biden stated that it will not.
“We are not going to send rocket systems to Ukraine that could hit Russia,” Biden told reporters at the White House, echoing his speech to avoid a clash between NATO and the Russians that could end in World War III. Multiple missile launchers are on the table, but only with a lower range — there are American models that can hit targets at 300 km.
This Monday, the Russian region of Kursk, neighboring Ukraine, announced that it would receive military reinforcements to deal with the eventuality of the conflict beginning to spill over, in the form of one-off attacks. Biden’s speech was praised by former Russian President Dmitri Medevedev, now a hardliner on the country’s Security Council.
His boss, Putin, who again had health problems speculated in the Western press denied by Chancellor Sergei Lavrov, in turn engaged in direct diplomacy with NATO’s most skittish member, Turkey.
In a conversation with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who supports Kiev but remains close to Moscow, Putin outlined a plan to remove sea mines from the Black Sea and allow a corridor for Ukrainian grain to flow to the world. Today, there are fears of famine in parts of Africa because there are more than 20 million tons of wheat and corn dammed up by the war.
The Russian proposal had already been rejected by Kiev last week, because in practice it would subject its export to the Kremlin’s plans and also because Putin wanted the suspension of some of the sanctions to which his country is subject in exchange for the arrangement.
The conversation with Erdogan shows that the matter is not over, and Putin had already spoken on Saturday on the subject with Scholz and Macron, in a renewal of diplomatic channels. Moreover, the Turkish is the one who is promising to veto the entry of Finland and Sweden into NATO, an important by-product of the war.
All of this comes as Russian forces escalate their attacks in Donbass, the east of the country. The besieged and destroyed city of Severodonestk, whose fall would complete Moscow’s conquest of Lugansk province, saw street fighting.
Lavrov told a French network that keeping all of Donbass, made up of the province and neighboring Donetsk, independent, is the Kremlin’s “absolute priority” – he did not comment, however, on the failure of the initial offensive of the war to take Kiev.
