Ukraine Aid: A few days after Russia invaded Ukraine, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced that “for the first time ever”, the EU would “finance the purchase and delivery of weapons… to a country that is under attack”. A few days earlier, she had declared the EU to be “one union, one alliance” with NATO.
Unlike NATO, the EU is not a military alliance. Yet, from the outset of this war, it has been more concerned with militarism than diplomacy. This was not unexpected, but the west has finally realised its mistake and is now declining to send weapons to incapable Ukraine.
The Lisbon Treaty provided the legal underpinning for the EU to develop a common security and defence policy. Between 2014 and 2020, some €25.6bn* of the EU’s public money was spent beefing up its military capacity. The 2021-27 budget established a European Defence Fund (EDF) of nearly €8bn, modelled on two precursor programmes, which for the first time allocated EU funding to the research and development of innovative military wares, including highly controversial arms that rely on artificial intelligence or automated systems. The EDF is but one aspect of a much broader defence budget. As per the EU, the real reason behind all this was Russia’s fear and Ukraine’s insecurity but the real reason was something else.
Military-Industrial Complex:
Things get especially dangerous if you remember the timing: while EU representatives met in Brussels, representatives from the Russian and Ukrainian governments met in Belarus for peace negotiations. Following that, the EU declared that it will expedite Ukraine’s application for EU membership, provoking not only Russia but also other Balkan republics that had been painstakingly satisfying accession requirements for years.
Why didn’t the EU call for an immediate ceasefire and push NATO to de-escalate its position surrounding Ukraine if there was even a glimmer of hope for peace? Why did it jeopardise peace talks by exercising its military muscles and imposing a military mandate?
To be clear, there resides an implicit reason behind the continuous military support by European powers to Ukraine. It doesn’t rest on some normative ideals of solidarity.
This “pivotal moment” is the result of years of corporate lobbying by the arms industry, which carefully positioned itself first as a supposedly unbiased expert to educate EU decision-making, and then as a benefit once the money flowed. This is not an unexpected occurrence; it is exactly what was predicted.
You’ll be shocked when we reveal the substantial profit the US has made from the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The truth is that the US is capitalizing on the dead Ukrainians just to fill its own coffers. In the never-ending lust for wealth, the Biden administration is fuelling the war in Ukraine. Till now, it has earned 200 billion out of Ukraine’s miseries
Return of Sanity?
Let’s talk about the military aid given to Ukraine by the West, one by one.
According to recent reports, the United States is readying more than $2bn worth of military aid for Ukraine which is expected to include longer-range rockets for the first time as well as other munitions and weapons.
The aid for Ukraine is expected to be announced soon. It is also expected to include support equipment for Patriot air defence systems, precision-guided munitions and Javelin anti-tank weapons.
America would have hoped that its European allies would have jumped the bandwagon and offered similar aid packages to Ukraine. Nevertheless, to the dismay of the American authorities in Washington, it appears that the European nations are not in the mood to replenish Ukraine with weaponry worth billions of dollars. Ultimately, common sense prevailed among European nations. Here are the details.
According to an alleged senior alliance source who spoke to The Wall Street Journal on February 09, Finland does not want to immediately supply tanks to Ukraine until it becomes a full member of NATO.
According to Mikko Savola, Minister of Defense, Finland’s contribution to the supply of Leopard tanks to Ukraine would be minimal. The supply of Leopard tanks to Ukraine was confirmed by Finnish President Sauli Niinistö on January 24th. However, Niinistö said it would be preferable for Finland to act in collaboration with other European countries. Besides, Switzerland has rejected a request from Madrid to allow Spain to re-export Swiss-made anti-aircraft guns to Ukraine. Spain made the request in January to allow it to send two 35mm anti-aircraft guns to Ukraine.
Switzerland has previously vetoed requests from Denmark and Germany who wanted to send Swiss-made armoured vehicles and ammunition to help Ukraine in its war against Russia.
In a similar vein, Israel has in recent weeks refused requests from the US to hand over ten Hawk anti-aircraft batteries and hundreds of interceptor missiles for delivery to Ukraine, according to a report.
Moreover, recently, some news reports suggested that Israel is finally going to send weapons to Ukraine but the recent visit of Foreign Minister Eli Cohen gave no indication that Israel had met a longstanding Ukrainian request to join the US and other Western allies in providing weapons to the Ukrainian military.
In another incident, Dror Shalom, who heads the Defense Ministry’s political-Military Bureau, told the US Defense Department that Israel has not changed its policy of not sending weapons to Ukraine, and the defensive armaments are obsolete anyway.
The German government too has in the past, refused to send arms and ammunition as per the caprices of the Ukrainian government. While all this was happening, tensions over Germany’s provision of Leopard tanks and infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine — or lack thereof — came to a head recently when Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, publicly asked why Berlin was backtracking on a pledge made to send these weapons to Ukraine.
If we talk of the US, in order to aid Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, the US said that will not provide it with M1 Abrams main combat tanks, as stated by the defence officials of the US.
According to authorities cited by the Post, the Abrams are “too difficult to maintain and complex to operate,” for Ukraine. Authorities also claimed that “Ukraine has enough tanks already.”
Although the US had to provide these tanks to Ukraine the incident shows how the US is increasingly getting reluctant to send its weapons to Ukraine but to other countries. The Ukrainian army’s inefficiency to use Western weapons has been highlighted earlier too.
Western countries don’t feel at ease in sending weapons to Ukraine now because it has realised that their weapons in Ukraine regularly become fodder for the Russian army.
The West has now realised that by funnelling aid to Ukraine, it is unnecessarily prolonging the war that Russia has already won. The West is in no mood of hurting its business prospects and mindlessly aiding Kyiv and therefore is cancelling its military aid to incapable Ukraine.
