“The European Union and the member states are prepared to contribute, together with their partners, to the future security commitments to Ukraine” to help it “defend itself in the long term, deter acts of aggression and resist destabilization attempts”, it affirms. the draft of the conclusions of the European summit that begins today in Brussels.
The text, introduced at the Elysee’s proposal, is both an offer and a demand for the crucial role that the EU has played in supporting Ukraine from a military and financial point of view, and it comes in the midst of negotiations between various member countries of NATO (United States, United Kingdom, Germany and France) to give Kyiv long-term “security guarantees”.
These commitments could resemble the agreements that Israel has, for example, with the US through agreements to receive long-term military aid or train the Ukrainian army. “We have done things that were unthinkable just a year and a half ago” to support Ukraine, claim European diplomatic sources, referring to the purchase of weapons with EU funds for Ukraine, macro-financial aid or the program to produce ammunition.
During the summit, European leaders must define how to seal that commitment. “We are working on it. What we do not want is for them to be mere empty words, we want to be able to explain what the text means”, commented yesterday in Brussels the Prime Minister of Estonia, Kaja Kallas, one of the most active leaders in the debates on the place of Ukraine in the EU and NATO. In her opinion, the best guarantee that can be given to Kyiv is to join the military organization. “Article 5 is the best deterrent and it’s cheaper than the security guarantees any ally can give you,” she argued. “The reason we [the Baltics] are not living in dark times right now is because we are in NATO, that is a deterrent for Russia.”
Another of the issues that will be addressed today is the possible use of Russian assets frozen through EU sanctions -both reserves of the Central Bank of Russia worth 200,000 million euros, as well as oligarchs’ mansions and yachts- for the benefit of from Ukraine. The pressure is mounting as talks on the reconstruction of the country progress. The matter, very complex from a legal point of view, is far from arousing unanimity, but a possible agreement is in sight around the idea of ??investing the funds in the markets and delivering the benefits to Ukraine.
