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By Natalia Drozdiak, Michael Nienaber and Maria Tadeo
Three moments point to a slow disentanglement from Ukraine by its closest allies.
There was Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who felt compelled to go all the way to Argentina just to get some face time with the man stonewalling European Union aid. Next a detour to Washington, where the Ukrainian president, once hailed as a hero, left empty-handed. And then came the summit in Brussels he dialed into remotely after it was made clear his presence wouldn’t be helpful, even when the fate of his country was front and center.
France and Germany and others let it be known showing up wouldn’t be a good idea, according to people familiar with the discussion, who spoke on condition of anonymity. They needed space to try and make a deal with a wayward Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who proudly maintains ties with Russia even after its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
In the end, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz resorted to an unprecedented procedural gimmick to literally have Orban leave the room in order for the bloc to agree to opening accession talks — a process that could take as long as a decade. But when it came to the money, what Ukraine desperately needs to stay in the fight against Russia, the decision was put off.
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The painful optics weren’t lost on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Today, Ukraine produces almost nothing. They are still trying to save something, but they get freebies for everything,” Putin said during his marathon annual news conference. “Apparently, all this is ending little by little.”
In Brussels, Ukraine notched a largely symbolic win with an agreement to start membership talks. Orban, tellingly, vetoed the planned $50 billion EU aid package, delaying talks into early next year.
In Washington, the House of Representatives left town until Jan. 9 without passing President Joe Biden’s request for an additional $61 billion in assistance to Ukraine as Republicans continue to press demands on border control.
The events of the last week are in stark contrast to the reception Zelenskiy once enjoyed and lay out the uphill struggle for support during a US election year when Donald Trump is vying to retake the White House. There is history between the two. Back in 2019, Trump badgered the newly-elected Zelenskiy to investigate the Bidens.
For allies, the flagging of support is tied in part to a much-vaunted counteroffensive that failed to deliver on the high expectations of allies.
A year ago, Ukrainian forces succeeded in recapturing large swathes of land from Russian troops. A red carpet was laid out for Zelenskiy in Brussels in February as he disembarked French President Emmanuel Macron’s private plane.
Everyone wanted a piece of the wartime leader then. A last-minute dinner in Paris the night before with Macron and Scholz drew the ire of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who was not invited.
This week, Ukraine’s future was being hashed out by that same trio. At their hotel bar the night before the summit, Macron and Meloni sat down over a bottle of red wine, with Scholz joining them just after midnight. They gamed out whether Orban would block or unblock it all.
After eight hours of discussions on Ukraine, Scholz pulled his surprise move to overcome Orban’s obstinacy. He looked at Orban and suggested the Hungarian leader should get up and go get a cup of coffee as the others vote on starting accession talks with Ukraine.
Orban agreed, thus holding back his veto on at least one key priority for Kyiv. In an hour-long conversation in advance of the summit, Zelenskiy had stressed to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk that the EU decision on accession was more important, and the finances only secondary, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Zelenskiy told Tusk that Ukraine needed a signal that Europe wasn’t abandoning the country, the person said, adding that Orban was aware he couldn’t veto both funding and enlargement.
Later that evening, Orban forced the EU to kick discussions into 2024. Every day counts for Ukraine at this point as fighting will resume at the onset of spring, with Putin playing for time while Zelenskiy is feeling the pressure to show results on the battlefield.
Kyiv won’t necessarily run out of money in the next few weeks, but the infighting and delays among allies raise questions about the ability for Ukraine’s backers to sustain aid over the long-term, especially as the fight grinds to a stalemate and the US presidential campaign heats up.
After staunchly backing Ukraine for almost two years, more than $110 billion remains shut off on both sides of the Atlantic, with aid for Kyiv increasingly becoming a political bargaining chip.
Ukraine’s allies are determined to show Putin he’s wrong in betting he can outlast their resolve to support Kyiv. But after this week, that’s proving increasingly hard to do.
Some EU leaders noted they could face difficulties maintaining public support for Ukraine if the bloc spent money to Ukraine but couldn’t find cash for other problems.
Nationalist and populist politicians, from the Netherlands to France, are looking for gains in next year’s EU parliament elections and want issues such as keeping migrants out of the EU prioritized over money for a conflict outside their borders.
The US and EU delays on aid for Ukraine risk sending the wrong message, not just to Putin or even Zelenskiy, but also to each other. While Putin does not have the resources to sustain his war against Ukraine indefinitely, officials estimate he can do so for at least several years to come.
European diplomats acknowledged the urgency on aid heading into the summit, particularly as the US is also at an impasse. They are keen to counter any arguments that the EU isn’t pulling its weight to support Ukraine or its own security.
But ultimately, it can’t compete with the US when it comes to money. For the US to hold back funds until January or February “would be catastrophic, both politically and militarily,” according to Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute.
“If we lose our nerve, everyone else will, too,” Schake said.
