EU is Preparing to Take Responsibility
Given the dodgy character of the Ukraine situation after the election of Trump, European governments are scrambling to speed up their efforts. More support to Ukraine, real re-armament of Europe
The target has been reached, happily announced the Estonian defense minister Hanno Pevkur at a doorstep when arriving for an urgent EU meeting in the Foreign Affairs Council (Defence), 19 November 2024.
Hanno Pevkur meeting the press before the EU Defense meeting. Still from video by EU.
Hanno Pevkur is celebrating finally to have met the target of delivering 1 million rounds of artillery ammunition to Ukraine. The promise was made ‘one year ago’, he says. Absolutely good news, but the promised date was actually back in March:
As reported by Ukrinform, in March 2023, on Estonia’s initiative, EU countries made a political commitment to supply Ukraine with one million artillery shells over the course of a year. This project revealed certain logistical and production challenges in the EU’s defense industry, prompting the European Commission and member states to take steps to rapidly enhance their military-industrial capabilities.
On November 11, Borrell announced that EU member states would deliver 1.5 million artillery shells to Ukraine by the end of the year. He also acknowledged that, despite the bloc’s commitment to provide Ukraine with one million rounds of ammunition by spring, the promise had not been fully met.
"The issue was not about delivering existing stock but about production. When we promised to reach a level of one million rounds per year by spring, we did not know the actual production capacity, which was not as high as we thought. Now, we have achieved this production capacity," Borrell noted.
This situation illustrates Ukraine’s dilemma with the donor countries: While grateful for, and extremely dependent on, deliveries from allies, Ukraine is still short of essential and basic supplies for keeping the war running. Russia is also running short, or at least was, until North Korea started delivering huge volumes. But Russia has been pursuing the strategy of quantity before quality right from the start, and will so for as long as they can keep up production and import.
In many ways, Ukraine has performed much better than expected in this war of attrition. The WWII strategy of using production capacity far behind the front lines to supply the army while waiting for the opponent to deplete his resources has had its effect once more in this war. But at this perhaps final winter of the war, all parties are exhausted and who can find more extra resources than the opponent will determine who wins, if any. Unless some extraordinary weapon or intervention surprises all.
We must note that Ukraine has consistently pointed out that many of the supplies it has been promised or agreed upon, have been delayed. US deliveries are delayed up to 90% of the cases. So EU is not the only one to be hanging a bit in the handbrake.
Volodymyr Zelensky mentioned the problem at the Nordic Council meeting in Reykjavik last month. The Kyiv Post has investigated the claim and reasons that based on the published figures for what US Congress has approved and what has actually arrived in Ukraine, it is actually substantiated that as little as 10% of the military supplies approved for delivery to Ukraine before the end of 2024 has actually arrived.
Speaking at a meeting with reporters in Reykjavik on Wednesday, Zelensky said one of Ukraine’s many problems battling Russian invasion is that allied-promised arms assistance arrives too late or not at all - which complicates defense planning and kills and injures Ukrainians. Kyiv Post writes:
In the case of the US, Ukraine’s biggest military materiel supporter, a whopping 90 percent of military assistance approved by Congress for FY 2024 has yet to reach the battlefield, the Ukrainian leader said.
Here we must remind ourselves that Ukraine was hit by a complete stop of military supplies from the US from the end of December 2023 until April 2024. This was due to Congress getting in election mode and wrangling over border law reform and other issues. After a complete stop of deliveries, Biden then could sign a bipartisan bill approving 60.84 billion dollars in military assistance to Ukraine, to be completed by the end of FY2024.
According to the Pentagon figures published in December 2023, a few days before US arms assistance to Ukraine was cut off, the total value of that assistance, counted from the start of Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion, was $44.9 billion.
An Oct. 21 press release (the most recent on Ukraine assistance published by the Pentagon) placed the value of US military assistance earmarked for Ukraine, incorporating all money actually spent on Ukrainian military support in 2024, at $59.5 billion.
The difference between those two official numbers - $14.6 billion - is less than one quarter of the nearly $61 billion of military assistance approved by Congress in April 2024.
Zelensky’s Wednesday ten percent claim implied that, of the $14.6 billion worth military assistance for Ukraine that the Pentagon had actually said it has earmarked or spent in 2024, slightly more than $6 billion worth is in the hands of Ukrainian troops, and $8.6 billion was paid or will soon be bought, and is so somewhere in the delivery pipeline.
The EU Defence Council meeting mentioned at the top of this post produced a strategic review conclusion, without any stated goals on timing, but with agreement that the strategic defense collaboration needs to be updated. An excerpt from the text below.
EU does not currently have a military capability or a defense policy. Evidently it is possible to support Ukraine with weapons and ammunition and economical support. The defense aspects are, however, still up to member countries and their collaborative efforts. The Nordic and Baltic leaders will meet again tonight 27 November for further talks on how to make a joint effort.