President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, in Kyiv, September 15, 2022. EFREM LUKATSKY / AP
Send a political signal. This is the main objective of the trip of the highest representatives of the Community institutions to Ukraine on Thursday 2nd and Friday 3rd February. On the first day, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, and about fifteen commissioners were to meet in Kyiv with ministers from Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government to jointly examine current and future cooperation. A summit meeting between the European Union (EU) and Ukraine is scheduled for the following day and will be attended by the President of Ukraine, Mrs von der Leyen, and the President of the European Council, Charles Michel.
Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel have already traveled to Ukraine three times. But “this is the first EU-Ukraine summit since the beginning of the war,” recalled the EU’s High Representative, Josep Borrell, a few days ago. For their part, after Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington on December 21, 2022, Europeans wanted to show the world, and Moscow in particular, their full support for Kyiv.
“If Ukraine can continue this war, it’s thanks to the EU,” said one commissioner. In fact, the Twenty-Seven intend to use this trip to announce it. Not only are they welcoming Ukrainian refugees – there are between 4.5 million and 5 million on their soil – but they have also put their hands in their wallets on anything that seemed imaginable at the start of the conflict, particularly military materiel. Overall, “EU aid – humanitarian, financial and military – amounts to 49 billion euros,” summarizes Josep Borrell. “The EU is the first pillar of Ukraine,” he stresses.
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“We continue to support Ukraine. It wasn’t that obvious. At the beginning of the war we had weapons, now we have to produce them. Likewise, we found money on the margins of the community budget, now it’s more complicated,” confides a diplomat, who also mentions the nine packages of sanctions already taken against Russia – despite the reluctance of some, including Viktor Orban’s Hungary – and the tenth in preparation . Not to mention the record-breaking granting of EU candidate status to Kyiv in June 2022, just under four months after its application, when “before the war no one thought that Ukraine could be a serious candidate for EU membership,” it said Source.
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Volodymyr Zelenskyy has mastered the art of keeping his European allies under friendly pressure. “He got the tanks, now he wants the planes,” commented a source.
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