The EU increases by 500 million aid to the Ukrainian army to resist Russia

“Russia continues its war of attrition, indiscriminately bombing any kind of civilian infrastructure, killing innocent people. It is a tragedy”, denounces the head of European diplomacy, Joseph Borrell. The military aggression of the Kremlin against Ukraine, which is already on its way to serving five months, monopolizes the agenda of the meeting of foreign ministers of the 27 that is being held this Monday in Brussels, the last one before the summer break.

[Bruselas aprueba un nuevo paquete de sanciones contra Rusia: oro pero no gas]

The heads of European diplomacy plan unlock a new tranche of 500 million euros from the community budget to finance the delivery of weapons to the kyiv government. With this “political agreement”, the military assistance provided by the EU since the outbreak of the conflict rises to a total of 2,500 million, to which must be added the bilateral contributions of the Member States (of which there is no consolidated figure) .

It is the first time in history that Brussels has mobilized the European Peace Support Fund to finance the delivery of weapons of war. This instrument has a global budget of 5,000 million euros for the period 2021-2027 and until now it had been used to send non-lethal assistance to allied countries. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, half of the money has been consumed to support Ukraine.

“The weapons that we manage to supply, that our transatlantic partners manage to supply, this is what is going to help the Ukrainians stop the all-out attack on their territory. It is what has allowed them to regain control of Snake Island. This is what will probably allow Ukraine to restart the transport of grain from the port of Odessa”, defended the Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis.

“If there is one thing that must continue, it is the handover of weapons. Anyone who can do it – obviously these are the major industrial countries of the Western world – should speed up deliveries,” Landsbergis said.

The foreign minister, Jose Manuel Albaresexplained that Spain supports unlocking this new tranche of 500 million from the European Peace Support Fund because it is about “supporting the military effort of the Ukrainian Army to preserve its sovereignty, its territorial integrity, its freedom, its democracy”.

The heads of European diplomacy also plan to give political green light to the seventh package of sanctions against the Kremlin proposed by the Commission last Friday. Its main novelty is the ban on Russian gold, a measure that the G-7 countries have already adopted. In addition, the blacklist of sanctioned Russian oligarchs and leaders will be expanded and the holes in the previous six packages will be covered.

The new package does not include any additional measures in the energy sector, so it is expected to be approved without problems this Wednesday. The EU has already banned imports of Russian coal (a measure that will take effect in August) and has also approved an embargo on oil (from the end of the year). The gas sector is exempt from sanctionsalthough now it is Vladimir Putin who is threatening to cut off the supply.

Borrell has defended the effectiveness of the sanctions against Moscow in the face of the attack by the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbanwho last Friday said that “Europe has shot itself in the lungs”adopting measures that are suffocating its economy and that have a minor effect on Moscow.

“There is a big debate about whether the sanctions are effective, whether the sanctions are affecting us more than Russia. Some European leaders say that the sanctions have been a mistake. I don’t think they were a mistake, it’s what we had to do and we’re going to continue doing it“, The head of European diplomacy replied to Orbán.

Borrell gives as an example the evolution of oil pricewhich he said was fired after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, but started to go down when the EU approved the embargo at the end of May and now it is already at levels prior to the start of the conflict. The latest data on the Russian economy, for example on the production of cars or household appliances, show in his opinion that the sanctions are indeed harming Moscow.

In any case, the High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy has argued that the EU must have “strategic patience”because it is not just about announcing sanctions but above all about applying them and letting them take effect.

All the EU countries are worried about the possibility that the Kremlin will definitively close the gas tap, especially the most dependent ones like Germany. “We are preparing for all kinds of scenarios,” said its Minister for European Affairs, Anna Luhrmann.

“We know that Russia can use gas as a weapon against us. In fact, they have already been doing so by reducing gas supplies,” Borrell said. In fact, the Community Executive plans to present this Wednesday a European contingency plan to deal with this possibility. But The former foreign minister has made it clear that the EU will not give in to the Kremlin’s blackmail: “We are not going to stop supporting Ukraine and putting sanctions on Russia.”

The other big problem that worries EU foreign ministers is the risk of a global food crisis caused by the blockade by Russia of more than 20 million tons of grain in Ukraine. Brussels has launched alternative routes to export part of the grain by train. The Romanian minister explained that 2.7 million tons have already passed through his country.

But Borrell himself admits that these efforts are insufficient and that it is necessary to materialize the principle of agreement reached last week in the UN with the mediation of Turkey to unblock the port of Odessa and other Ukrainian ports. “It’s a matter of life and death,” he has said.