Rhetoric and reality collide as France, Germany, Italy back Ukraine’s EU bid
By proclaiming their support for Ukraine and Moldova becoming official candidates for EU membership, the leaders of France, Germany and Italy on Thursday sent an unequivocal message to Vladimir Putin: the Soviet sphere of influence is dead — and it will not be resurrected by force.
The leaders — French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi — also delivered another even more pointed and immediate message to Russia: The EU and its allies will not strongarm Ukraine into any surrender or territorial compromise to end the war.
“We want the atrocities to stop and we want peace,” Draghi said at a news conference in Kyiv, where he and his counterparts appeared with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “But Ukraine must defend itself if we want peace, and Ukraine will choose the peace it wants. Any diplomatic solution cannot be separated from the will of Kyiv, from what it deems acceptable to her people. Only in this way can we build a peace that is just and lasting.”
Such reassurance came as a huge relief to Ukrainian officials who have feared throughout the nearly four-month-long war that Western allies might try to force an unjust settlement.
Each of the three EU leaders has come under criticism in recent months for seeming to be too accommodating of Russia’s gripes and demands, and potentially too willing to appease Putin. Macron, for instance, negotiated endlessly with Putin to no success, and has repeatedly urged that Russia not be “humiliated.” Berlin, in turn, has been slow to send urgently needed weapons.
And yet, despite the encouraging rhetoric, the trio of leaders — representing the EU’s biggest, richest and most powerful countries — did not announce any dramatic new military or financial assistance for Ukraine, which might help tip the war in Kyiv’s favor. [Continue reading…]
Ukraine's only able to fire 5k-6k artillery rounds/day, Dep. Defense Minister Maliar told me. That means the 36K rounds US is sending in its latest tranche of aid will last Kyiv roughly a week. Russia, meanwhile, fires nearly twice as many in a single day. https://t.co/ladaFGd015
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) June 16, 2022