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No one can know how long President Trump’s pique with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia will last this time. But the past few days have been an important signal that European persistence in its support for Ukraine has paid off, at least for now.
Mr. Trump’s decision to impose sanctions on two of Russia’s largest oil companies, Lukoil and Rosneft, will have a significant impact on Russian income over time. Europe added its own new sanctions on Thursday and committed to funding Ukraine’s financial and military needs for the next two years.
An innovative but controversial proposal to use frozen Russian assets as the basis for a large new loan to Ukraine was blocked for now by Belgian concerns about liability. But the bloc will continue to work to find agreement on it. Otherwise, meeting the funding pledge made Thursday night would badly strain already indebted national budgets.
Even if the bloc finds the money, questions remain about whether these efforts will be enough to sustain Ukraine’s uneven fight against Russia. And, analysts say, they will do little to persuade Mr. Putin to stop the war in Ukraine or even agree to a rapid cease-fire, as Mr. Trump demands. But the sanctions put substance behind the European commitment to helping Ukraine stand up to Russia — ideally with, or if necessary, without — Mr. Trump at their side.
The European leaders can also feel some satisfaction that their repeated interventions with Mr. Trump on behalf of Ukraine have finally produced at least some American pressure on Moscow. They insist that they will support Ukraine for as long as required to ensure its survival as an independent state, though any real strategy for ending the war is certain to require serious American pressure on Russia.
After Mr. Trump’s decision to seek no new funding for Ukraine, the Europeans are struggling to find the money to back up their commitment, when their own national budgets are badly stretched
The loan plan that the bloc is trying to effect would use the billions of dollars of frozen Russian assets in Europe in a complicated legal maneuver that doesn’t seize them outright. The result would be a 140-billion euro loan ($163 billion) to Ukraine, interest free, that would only have to be paid back if Russia pays Ukraine reparations at the end of the war.
But Belgium, which hosts most of those assets, wants to ensure that it will not be liable and that the bloc shares the risks. Many details remain to be worked out to satisfy the Belgians and, the Europeans hope, to get the participation of other important players in the Group of 7 industrialized nations. A revised version is expected to be on the agenda at the next E.U. summit in December.
Still, the president of the European Council of member states, António Costa, announced confidently late Thursday night that the bloc “is committed to addressing Ukraine’s pressing financial needs for the next two years, including support for its military and defense efforts,” which are estimated to involve more than $150 billion.
Also on Thursday, the European Union passed another set of sanctions against Russia that hit the energy-dominated Russian economy, as the new American sanctions will do. The bloc advanced a ban on the purchase of Russian liquefied natural gas a year to begin in 2027. It also added another 117 vessels from Russia’s “shadow fleet” of oil tankers, which have circumvented earlier controls, to a sanctions list.
The Europeans also sanctioned Rosneft, but not Lukoil, which supplies cheap oil to Hungary and Slovakia in comparatively small amounts.
Europe has delivered more aid to Ukraine than the United States and has, in some ways, won the argument that Ukraine must be supported, at least so far, noted Jean-Dominique Giuliani, a French analyst and chairman of the Robert Schuman Foundation, a nonprofit research institution. Europe’s policy requirements had not changed despite Mr. Trump’s vacillation, he said, including an immediate cease-fire, no territorial concessions by Ukraine, reparations, and prosecution of war criminals.
“No agreement can be reached at the expense of Ukraine and without the Europeans,” who have imposed numerous sets of sanctions on Russia and hold most of Russia’s assets abroad, Mr. Giuliani wrote on Wednesday.
In another example of European commitment, the countries of the so-called “coalition of the willing” were meeting on Friday in London to discuss further military support for Kyiv.
Still, the Europeans are working hard to keep Mr. Trump onside, or at least less swayed by Mr. Putin’s blandishments.
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Soldiers in the Zaporizhzhia region of eastern Ukraine this month.Credit…Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
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