In the corridors of Brussels, there is a sinking feeling that the political will to help Ukraine prevail over Russian aggression is ebbing – on both sides of the Atlantic. One senior western official told me it may take a “second shock” of the magnitude of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 to jolt western countries out of their funk, and spur Europeans to take more radical steps to boost and integrate their own defences. That shock may involve a sudden collapse of Ukrainian frontline defences, another Bucha-style massacre by Russian forces, or perhaps victory for Donald Trump on 5 November. Any of those would be a disaster for Kyiv.
For now, the US is preoccupied with its presidential election and an escalating war in the Middle East that has pushed Moscow’s grinding advance on the Donbas battlefield out of the headlines. France is distracted by a political and fiscal crisis, with Emmanuel Macron’s power at home and influence in Europe waning fast. Germany is paralysed by feuding in its moribund three-party coalition, which may or may not stagger on until a general election due in September 2025.
And the UK is struggling with its own budget woes as the new Labour government focuses on repairing health and public services amid a media furore over dodgy gifts from political donors. Meanwhile, far-right, pro-Russian parties are gaining ground in many European elections, most recently in Austria.
Russia conquered more Ukrainian territory in September than in any month since March 2022. Yet despite Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s trip to the UN general assembly and Washington to present a “victory plan”, and plead for more weapons and a freer hand to use them on Russian soil, American and European attention has drifted away. For Kyiv, these are dangerous and frustrating times.
Joe Biden, increasingly a lame duck, is avoiding any policy step that could compromise Kamala Harris’s chances of keeping Trump out of the White House. That constrains not only his ability to rein in Israel in its battle with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, but also his willingness to authorise Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia with US-supplied missiles or European arms containing US components. Biden remains concerned that Vladimir Putin may raise the nuclear stakes or retaliate against the west in ways that could widen the conflict and hand Trump a propaganda stick with which to beat the Democrats.
Britain and France, which supply Ukraine with Storm Shadow and Scalp air-to-ground missiles, cannot permit their unrestricted use against Russian rear bases without a US green light. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, continues to balk at supplying the Taurus missile system, which Kyiv has long requested to target Russian supply lines and missile launchpads. Scholz’s reluctance is a mixture of electoralism (the Alternative für Deutschland and Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance are both anti-war), historical (his SDP has always been the party of peace) and a fear of singling out Germany for Russian retribution.
In his parting speeches and interviews, the former Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, expressed public regret that western allies had not supplied Ukraine with more weapons before Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion, arguing that it would have made Moscow’s offensive harder and may even have deterred it. This is 20-20 hindsight, especially since Stoltenberg is still unwilling to condemn US caution or press openly for releasing deep-strike capabilities.
Retired US major general Gordon “Skip” Davis lamented that “the Biden administration has delayed time and time again”. Speaking on a European Policy Centre (EPC) panel on the battleground situation in Ukraine, he said that Washington had overestimated the likelihood that Putin would escalate the conflict and hence continued to provide just enough to keep Kyiv’s head above water while withholding the means to prevail. “We want not ‘as long as it takes’ but ‘whatever it takes’,” Davis added.
EU officials see a parallel between reluctance to provide gamechanging assistance to Ukraine and the stubborn resistance among major European powers against collective borrowing and joint weapons purchases to boost Ukraine’s and their own defences. Many European countries have emptied their threadbare ammunition stocks to supply Kyiv and are struggling to expand national arms industries, or source supplies abroad.
“There was some momentum behind greater European defence integration earlier this year, when the commission published its defence industrial strategy,” a senior official told me. “But it has faded since the European elections with the political problems in key capitals.” Now, it may take an earthquake such as the return to power of Nato-sceptical Trump to renew energy and put more money behind EU defence efforts. If Harris wins, the risk is that EU capitals ease up and revert to relying on US protection, as some did after Biden defeated Trump in 2020.
Ukraine can ill afford to wait for such a “second shock” to jolt western governments as its forces are bleeding out daily in the war of attrition imposed by a bigger enemy. “You can’t expect Ukraine to sustain another 30 months when our own country is the battlefield and subjected to daily strikes,” Mykola Bielieskov, a senior analyst at Ukraine’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, told the same EPC panel. “What we don’t see is a long-term strategy of sustained support. Otherwise, the Russian victory scenario will progress.”
For European governments, regardless of their domestic predicaments, the choice ought to be clear. Support Ukraine more decisively now, including with deep-strike capabilities, or face a far worse strategic position next year, with an emboldened Putin rearming for his next war of conquest.
Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre
