Borrell demands more weapons for Kyiv and predicts a new offensive by Putin

by time news

2023-05-29 22:14:11

BarcelonaFrom the Great Room of the W Hotel you can see a generous panorama of the Barcelona beach. Hundreds of people were sunbathing this Monday afternoon. Some were bathing. The vast majority seemed to be tourists or, at least, foreign citizens not used to the twenty-two degrees of the Catalan capital.

Meanwhile, in this auditorium, the head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, was giving a conference as part of the Cercle d’Economy conference. And he was telling an anecdote. It was February 2022 and only a few days were left before Vladimir Putin’s tanks entered Ukraine. The United States had already warned of Moscow’s intentions, and Borrell had traveled to Volodymyr Zelensky’s country to take his pulse. On that visit, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Khmihal told him: “We will be attacked. You can be sure that they will attack us.” And then: “I know you won’t send us young Europeans to fight in Ukraine. It’s very good in Barcelona. But will you at least send us weapons?” Borrell has admitted that he did not know what to answer. The beach confirmed today that, indeed, it is very good in Barcelona. And the arrival of good weather – and therefore the expected Ukrainian counter-offensive – reminds us that Kyiv’s survival continues to depend on Western weapons.

Borrell has been one of the European voices that has most vindicated the need to continue arming Ukraine. And he has taken advantage of these days to continue doing it: “I have friends who tell me that [com a europeus] we got ourselves into a mess. They tell me that if we stop sending weapons to Ukraine, the war will end quickly.” The Catalan politician says he answers them with another question. “If we stop helping Ukraine, you have to wonder how this war would end. I know how it would end: sending a message to Putin that he can wipe out an entire country with impunity”. Russian invasion of Crimea.” So,[Angela] Merkel opposed it. He said that [l’enviament d’armes] nothing would change because the Ukrainian army was too weak and the Russian too powerful.”

Even so, the high representative for foreign policy of the European Union has also made self-criticism of the response of a year and a half ago. “We took too long.” “We spent months debating whether to send the Patriot missiles or the Leopard tanks, and they finally arrived.” “And now the same thing is happening with the [caces militars] F-16. At the moment we have not given them, but we will do it eventually.” Borrell, therefore, takes it for granted that these military planes will be transferred to Kyiv, despite the reluctance of several Western allies, but he believes that if the decisions had been more agile “now we we would find ourselves in a better situation” on the battlefield.

Without planes, for now, but with all the weaponry that the West had promised to Kyiv in recent months, the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive, which should trigger the war, seems imminent. From Barcelona, ​​however, Borrell has emphasized another perspective. “I am not optimistic about what will happen in Ukraine this summer,” he said. Because? He believes that Moscow will lead a new offensive in the coming months. “He tried once and failed. He’ll try again.” Borrell, who predicts a long war, believes Putin will continue to prioritize trying to win the war before sitting down to negotiate. In Kyiv, for now, no one wants to hear about tables or negotiations either.

“Where are the paracetamols?”

The Catalan politician is also one of the great advocates of building a strategically more autonomous Europe. “Who likes to be dependent?”. Pol Morillas, director of the CIDOB and moderator of the conference, asked him if the last two colossal crises – the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine – had helped the EU in this regard. Borrell’s answer: Yes, but there is still a lot of work to be done.

“Before the pandemic, not a single gram of paracetamol was produced on the entire continent. And before the invasion, 40% of our gas came from Russia.” “Where are the paracetamols?” he says they asked themselves during the first stages of the pandemic. Paracetamols were in India. “We thought that the dependencies were elements of peace, that is, of good diplomatic relations.” But Borrell is clear that, in the current context, dependencies are elements of war, that is to say, weapons with which to attack rivals.

Borrell also spoke about the other elephant in the room: European military capabilities. The United States has been demanding more military investment from European governments for decades, and some EU members are beginning to push for it as well. “No one wins elections by proposing an increase in military spending,” Borrell admitted. But he is clear that it must be done, and especially in the face of a more “dangerous” global context marked by a multipolarity that, in some way, shrinks Europe. “If Europe wants to be a world power, it must have military capabilities.” He put it another way: “Everybody prefers butter to canyons, but sometimes if you don’t have canyons, you don’t have butter. We are a very rich continent, but with a very low defense capacity. In that, he was right Trump.”

Borrell sees it as “normal” for the elections to be held during the European presidency

Borrell was also asked about the early elections called by the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, on July 23. The head of European diplomacy has said that he sees “within normality” that the elections are held during the Spanish presidency of the European Union, which begins on July 1. In this sense, he recalled that it is not the first time that a country that holds the presidency holds elections and that the Spanish government will participate normally in the planned events.

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