From the Telegraph / Yahoo!News:
"Ukraine is on its own. Europe is all talk, no action
Europe is lying to Ukraine. There will be no troops coming to its rescue. Yesterday’s meeting of the Coalition of the Willing yielded much bold talk – including an agreement in principle to what French president Emmanuel Macron called “reassurance forces in Ukraine.”
But there’s just one problem with Macron’s plan, and his name is Vladimir Putin. Europe’s leaders... seem not to have heard Putin’s often-repeated message that he adamantly opposes the idea of a Nato military presence in Ukraine. Indeed it’s abundantly clear that first and foremost among Putin’s justifications for his invasion was to prevent Ukraine’s Westward drift and to cut off its association with Nato.
That makes Macron’s plan for putting European boots on the ground part of the problem, not part of the solution. Putin will never agree to Nato peacekeepers, so why are the Europeans even talking about them? The only answer is another empty show of “solidarity” with Volodymyr Zelensky, who did a great deal of glad-handing and hugging of his European friends.
But in truth Zelensky – and all Ukrainians – have good reason to be very angry at their allies in the EU. Yes, European and US military aid has helped Ukraine to fight the much larger Russian army to a standstill. But the story of the three and a half year war has been one of constant delays and inadequate supplies. When it comes to making good on Canadian then-prime minister Justin Trudeau’s 2022 promise to provide Kyiv with “whatever it needs for as long as it takes”, the West has consistently been a day late and a dollar short.
This fateful mismatch between the West’s words and deeds goes back to Putin’s annexation of Crimea back in 2014. In the aftermath of that illegal land grab, then-chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel vowed that “Europe’s borders are and will remain unalterable” and said that Putin’s aggression would not be allowed to stand. Yet little more than a year after those fighting words, Germany happily signed a €9.5bn deal to build a second Nord Stream gas pipeline under the Baltic that would increase Europe’s dependency on the Kremlin and put more money into Putin’s coffers.
Little wonder that when, in the run up to Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin paid little heed to Western threats of dire consequences. He knew from experience that Europe’s words were written in water. Yes, the Kremlin was surprised by how quickly Europe was able to mobilise military aid in the first months of the war. But later months of wrangling over whether Germany would supply Leopard-2 main battle tanks, or whether the US would send F-16 fighters, Himars rocket artillery and ATACMs medium-range cruise missiles was part of a familiar pattern. The West wanted to help Ukraine to fight Russia without actually getting directly involved.
To be sure, “avoiding a kinetic war with Russia… is an absolute priority,” as then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Mark Milley told president Joe Biden when he first briefed America’s security chiefs on the danger of Putin’s invasion in September 2021. Putin’s brutal invasion and his ongoing attacks on Ukrainian civilians continue to outrage Western voters. But equally, nobody wants to fight a nuclear war over Donbas.
The same logic allies to the hare-brained scheme of European peacekeepers. Despite Macron’s championing of the Ukraine “reassurance force”, some 68 per cent of French respondents have told pollsters that they oppose putting their troops in harm’s way if hostilities are still ongoing. But the only point of an armed deterrence force is that it has to be a credible military threat, ready to fight and die if needed. And while 26 of the 35 Western countries participating in yesterday’s Coalition of the Willing have notionally agreed to “deploy troops or to provide assets to support peacekeepers in the air or at sea,” note well the weasel word “or”. Many leaders seem willing to back up peacekeepers. Just how many are willing to send their voters’ children to die for Ukraine remains to be seen.
Perhaps what was most significant about yesterday’s Coalition of the Willing meeting was what was not said. Gone was any talk of Ukraine’s Nato membership. That’s one key Kremlin demand met. And if we decipher Ursula von der Leyen’s summary of the security guarantees focused on making Ukraine into “a steel porcupine”, that means that when it comes to facing down future Russian aggression, Kyiv is on its own – while its allies keep a safe distance."
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The same hypocrisy and empty talk angered Ukrainian journalist Vitaly Portnikov, who wrote: "During the war, European troops cannot be present in Ukraine. A ceasefire is not negotiated, so there is no possibility of deploying European troops on Ukrainian territory during ceasefire. A peace treaty would obviously prohibit the presence of European troops on Ukrainian territory. Then what are we even talking about?"
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