By proclaiming their support for Ukraine and Moldova becoming official candidates for European Union (EU) membership, the leaders of France, Germany and Italy yesterday 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 strong-arm 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 favour.
By contrast, U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced an additional $1 billion in support for Ukraine.
Ukrainian casualties are rising as its military struggles to stop the Russian invaders now occupying large swaths of the south and east of the country, including a “land bridge” to Crimea, which Moscow invaded and annexed with lightning speed in 2014. And there is no indication that Ukraine can achieve any peace without a giant increase in aid.
The proclamation of support for EU candidate status came during a highly symbolic — if months late — trip to Ukraine, where the leaders visited Kyiv and Irpin, a suburb where occupying Russian forces allegedly committed atrocities before being repelled.
Other leaders, including the Czech, Polish and Slovenian prime ministers, have been visiting war-torn Ukraine since mid-March. European Parliament President Roberta Metsola went at the end of March, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has visited Kyiv twice since the Russian invasion, in April and again last week.
During much of that time, Macron was preoccupied with his reelection campaign in France, and Scholz had declined invitations to visit after Ukraine snubbed the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who had wanted to visit in April.
For their visit, the trio of leaders were joined by Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, representing the EU’s newer, eastern member countries — in an apparent effort to blunt criticism that the big, founding countries were acting as an exclusive clique.
Like his travel companions, Iohannis also voiced his unequivocal backing for granting candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova when the heads of state and government on the European Council take up the question at a summit in Brussels next week. Unanimity is required for approval.