If EU won’t defend Ukraine then Britain must lead the way
ALTHOUGH Britain has opted for a life outside the European Union, few in this country would belittle the role the bloc played in uniting former enemy states across the continent. Sir Winston Churchill himself advocated a kind of United States of Europe in 1946 in order to make war unthinkable, and the European Economic Community – later the EU – was the manifestation of that dream.
The EU’s role in promoting peace and prosperity continued during the 1990s and 2000s when former Soviet bloc countries were encouraged to work towards membership, something which several achieved in 2004 and 2007.As a result, millions of Eastern Europeans were brought under the influence of western democracies, and encouraged to look away from a Russia which was beginning to slip backwards towards dictatorship.
What has happened to the EU’s role promoting freedom and democracy? In August European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen would have had the perfect opportunity to reinforce democracy in Eastern Europe. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky invited her to his country’s 30th anniversary celebrations. Yet instead of turning up and being seen to support Ukraine’s independence in the face ofVladimir Putin’s aggression, she didn’t even feel it worthy of a personal response. Instead, she had one of her aides send an offhand answer saying she was too busy.
IT WASN’T just rude – it broke the EU’s protocol, in which Presidents of the European Commission are supposed to reply personally to national leaders.
Supporting Ukraine matters hugely because of Russia’s annexation of the Crimea in 2014. Any distance between western democracies and
Ukraine will be interpreted by Putin as a sign they don’t care, and will do little to defend it.
Give the wrong sign and it won’t be lost on Putin, who in recent months has moved tens of thousands of troops close to the Ukrainian border, raising fears of an imminent invasion.
The aggression has provoked US President Joe Biden to send two warships to the Black Sea in Ukraine’s defence.
If the West were to give up on Ukraine it wouldn’t just be that country which found itself under threat. For years, the Russian leader has been testing the West’s resolve to defend the Baltic states, too. Putin has never accepted the break-up of the Soviet Union three decades ago and would love dearly to reassemble it.
The threat has not been lost on Nato which has bulked up defences in the Baltic states. But it is up to the EU, too, to exert its soft power in the region. The Baltic states are, after all, EU members. Ukraine, too, has ambitions to join.
Yet instead of deploying the EU’s considerable political power, von der Leyen shows no interest at all. It is true that in its 30 years as a newly-independent nation, Ukraine has not always been easy to support. It has suffered a run of lousy leaders and been bedevilled by corruption.The election of President Zelensky in 2019 promised a new beginning. He sought to engage with the EU and to fight corruption through laws which removed immunity from prosecution for the powerful.
FOR ALL his faults, von der Leyen’s predecessor, Jean-Claude Juncker, lost no time in congratulating Zelensky and promised to speed up a free-trade agreement between the EU and Ukraine. But suddenly the EU has gone missing.At least it provides an opportunity for postBrexit Britain to wield its influence. If von der Leyen is too busy to travel to Ukraine in August, Boris Johnson should find time in his schedule.
The Prime Minister has done much to build on Britain’s friendship with Ukraine. Last August, while the EU was still putting up obstacles to an EU-UK trade deal, President Zelensky flew to London and signed a UK- Ukraine deal. Last week, Johnson called Zelensky and reaffirmed Britain’s “unwavering support for Ukraine’s sov ereignty and territorial integrity”.
The anniversary of Ukraine’s independence in 1991 is something we should be celebrating. It began as a risky manoeuvre during the short-lived coup against the then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Within days he was back, but power shifted quickly to the Russian leader, Boris Yeltsin, who supported Ukraine’s independence.
Ukraine’s push for sovereignty precipitated the fall of the Soviet Union in as bloodless a revolution as had freed most of the rest of Eastern Europe two years earlier. It must not be allowed to be reversed by Putin. If the EU won’t stand strong in support of Ukraine then Britain should seize the initiative.
‘Putin has never accepted the break-up of the Soviet Union’