Welcome back. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vented his quiet fury to the FT this week about Donald Trump cutting US intelligence sharing with Ukraine and doing deals with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
“How can Trump be friends with him?” the Ukrainian leader said.
He also shared his frustration with a disunited Europe. Despite delivering financial and military support worth €237bn to Kyiv, according to the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine Support Tracker, and implementing 21 packages of sanctions against Russia, the EU and its allies have been unable to provide the country with the decisive military edge it needs to bring Moscow to the negotiating table.
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Kyiv still has to contend with what a Ukrainian official called a “triple American monopoly” on intel, interceptors and internet, which Europe has so far done little to break.
US early warning surveillance for incoming ballistic missiles (European militaries have stepped up in providing targeting assistance);
US Patriot interceptors for ballistic missiles (a modernised version of the Franco-Italian Samp/T is due to arrive in Kyiv in the coming months but analysts say its Aster-30 interceptor is in even shorter supply than Patriots);
The Starlink satellite communications network (and its military analogue Starshield), which is vital to Ukrainian battlefield operations, drone strike campaign and air defence.
“Can you do something without America?” Zelenskyy said. “Today, it’s very difficult. Can you fight when you have the unity of Europe and be strong? Yes, but the problem is what does it mean, unity of Europe?”
The EU is finding it harder to agree on additional sanctions on Russia as member states dig in and defend their special interests — such as Greek shipping — or pick holes in existing measures, such as France’s counter-productive demand to remove billionaire Alisher Usmanov from the sanctions list.
There is little appetite in European capitals to grant fast-track EU membership to Ukraine and no agreed strategy on how to bind the country closer to the bloc in the years to come.
And there are growing questions about the bloc’s willingness to deliver another large package of aid to Kyiv when a €90bn EU loan is used up next year.
Zelenskyy also said his country could face “a lot of challenges” if pro-Russia parties make big gains in Europe’s 2027 election supercycle.
C’est non
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen told the FT this week she would stop financial aid to Ukraine six months after taking office, if she won next year’s presidential election.
“The honest thing to do with Mr Zelenskyy is to tell him, to warn him in fact that, listen, we can’t do more, we can’t manage more,” she told the FT. “We’ve already done €90bn of loans, that’s €18bn for France. €18bn is really a lot.”
The EU has proposed a funding facility for Ukraine worth €100bn under its draft seven-year budget, but Le Pen is determined to try to scupper any budget deal by withholding half of France’s annual contribution.
The contrast could not be stronger with Le Pen’s counterpart in Rome.
Ever since Russia’s full-scale invasion, Italy’s nationalist prime minister Giorgia Meloni has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine, although her country’s bilateral aid has been a much lower €4.3bn.
Sì, certo
Nonetheless, in a speech to Italy’s Senate this week Meloni delivered a strikingly robust expression of solidarity with Kyiv — and criticism of Trump.
If Ukraine stopped defending itself “we would be discussing the occupation of a European nation and the return of the Soviet-style imperialism that Europe experienced for half a century”, she said.
Meanwhile, a Trump administration deal to buy hundreds of thousands of tonnes of Russian diesel, ostensibly to help bring down US fuel prices, came with big risks.
“A legitimisation for Moscow while its bombs continue to fall on Ukrainian cities, new revenues with which to finance the war, an implicit weakening of sanctions leverage: these are elements we cannot ignore, and which contradict everything western states, including the United States, have done so far to push Putin to the negotiating table,” Meloni said.
Italian commentators pored over her remarks trying to work out her political strategy.
Dividing lines
Was she trying to draw sharper lines with her new far-right and pro-Moscow challenger, Roberto Vannacci? Was she tapping into the historical aversion of Italian conservatives to Soviet imperialism? Or was she trying to stoke division among her leftwing opponents? The anti-Ukraine stance of Giuseppe Conte, leader of the populist leftwing Five Star Movement, is a big obstacle to a possible alliance with the centre-left Democratic Party.
Le Pen sees the spate of elections in Europe next year, and the widespread rise of the nationalist right, as a chance to reshape the EU from within with a powerful caucus of like-minded allies within the European Council, which brings together the 27 leaders.
But unless either she or Meloni changes direction on Ukraine, they would be in very different EU camps on an issue of fundamental importance to the bloc.
As German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told the FT in an interview this week, “if we give up our support for Ukraine, this will have an enormous impact on the entire political order of this continent.”
Scoops of the week
Henry Foy, Paola Tamma, Christopher Miller and Amy Mackinnon on the US pressing Europe to partially unfreeze frozen Russian assets in an attempt to revive peace talks
Jamie Smyth and Myles McCormick reveal the Trump administration is considering relaxing US sanctions against Russia’s shadow fleet
Read of the week
Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli on the Moka Express and the travails of Italian family capitalism
Source: www.ft.com
