With Ukraine opinion | Country

Two years after the failed lightning offensive, with which Vladimir Putin intended to keep Ukraine within his sphere of influence, dark clouds are obscuring the Kiev military’s admirable ability to resist. A week earlier, Ukrainian troops had been forced to withdraw from the strategic town of Avdiivka due to the disproportionate superiority of Russian artillery and Russia’s willingness to sacrifice as many troops as necessary to advance. In addition to the defeat of similar magnitude suffered at Bakhmut, there are fears that this withdrawal would be a turning point that would inaugurate a Russian counter-offensive in which Ukraine could lose more territory.

The allies have done much to prevent Kiev from losing the war, but clearly not enough for it to win. We can’t forget that it all started in 2014 – with the green Little Russians occupying Crimea and with Kremlin-organized separatist militias in Donbass – and resulted in a frozen contest that ended two years ago. Fresh flare-up as Putin resumes attacks Bare-faced today, in line with the horizon of a new pause in the conflict, will be no guarantee that Moscow will avoid any new aggression or direct provocations in the future against its neighbors.

Putin’s warmongering stance – from the 2008 incursion into Georgia to the current war against Ukraine – is difficult to understand without a reduction in the deterrence capability of Europe and the United States as a whole, and therefore NATO. Providing them with a political victory now, even under the appearance of a temporary status quo, would give them the green light to test the limits of the alliance’s deterrence capability, precisely at a time when doubts about the United States are rising. There are, not only the future dictated by Trump, but above all the present mortgaged by the irresponsible behavior of the Republican Party, which blocks aid to Zelensky’s government in Congress.

Despite this being Kiev’s most difficult moment in two years, Putin’s accomplishments, which are not limited to his recent military success, should be put on point. His regime is less isolated than that of its allies and has learned from its early failures. It has formed an effective authoritarian alliance with Iran and North Korea, which guarantees supplies of ammunition and missiles, and a more secretive and diplomatic alliance with China. It escapes sanctions because of the neutrality of the Global South, which is angry with Washington because of the double standards it applies to Israel, knowing also that the invasion of Gaza and, above all, the unbearable toll of Palestinian deaths confirm its position. And seriously harms solidarity with Kiev.

Defeated in 2014, Ukraine unexpectedly prevailed against Putin’s invasion, which turned two years old yesterday, and subsequently regained a good part of the lost territory. Furthermore, it destroyed Russian naval control over the Black Sea and achieved an important political victory with entry as a NATO candidate and the beginning of EU accession negotiations. However, the Spring Offensive of 2023 failed and is now at its critical moment, when it could lose everything if it does not try to win everything, a task that requires a firm attitude of its allies.

This and any other immediate difficulty is not only for Ukraine but also for the EU, which is a political community – but also a citizenry – born and educated in a culture of peace, born of the trauma of two world wars. Has happened. Fought on our own soil. If it is about stopping Putin and starting the recovery of stolen territory, Europe should immediately demand the supply of ammunition that the United States is stealing from it, as Josep Borrell asked at Twenty-Seven And as some have already done. own. This is the case of Denmark with the initiative of a group of countries led by the Czech Republic seeking the delivery of its entire artillery arsenal or the ammunition already available in European warehouses.

Until now, with understandable caution led by the United States, the allies have practiced gradual military solidarity to avoid an escalation of the conflict or even an increase in the use of increasingly dangerous weapons. Something similar has happened with the sanctions policy, which neither worked to stop Putin in the first place nor weakened him to the extent of defeating him later. If this is not someone else’s war and democracy, European construction and largely the international order are at stake, the EU has no choice but to take a more decisive position so that Ukraine can win and then ensure that it Can create your own. Deterrent system against Russia.

This is an objective that goes far beyond the Union’s much-coveted strategic autonomy and its natural structure in NATO, where France and the United Kingdom, the two European nuclear powers, are the only ones that can replace the current US umbrella. In the case that Washington certainly abandons its commitments to Europe. Only in this way, in addition to covering the security of the continent with its own resources, will it be possible to prevent the recurrence of aggression like the current one, because in a few months the people of the United States could disappear if Donald Trump returns to the White House.