Europe acts over fear US will block Ukraine aid

Britain and other European countries are trying to ensure they can help Ukraine win against Russia without the US should Donald Trump regain power.

The Kharkiv Palace hotel was heavily damaged by a Russian missile attack, in Kharkiv. Picture: AFP.

Britain and other European countries are “cranking through the gears” trying to ensure they can help Ukraine win against Russia without the US should Donald Trump regain power, according to a senior Whitehall source.

Ministers are trying to raise manufacturing capabilities so they can send weapons and ammunition and keep President Putin at bay for at least another year, regardless of US support.

Britain’s military intelligence chiefs believe Ukraine cannot defeat Russia this year because it does not have the manpower or weapons for a breakthrough. Nor does Russia’s military have the strength to launch a counteroffensive to break the Ukrainian lines.

However, some in the UK government believe that all that is needed to defeat Putin is “time” and Europe must be ready to help Ukraine without US support. “He’s betting on the House of Trump, but Europe is cranking through the gears to do it without the US … Can continental Europe afford to fold just because Trump says no more US dollars? I think most realise that Putin can’t be allowed to win, as consequences for European security are grave,” said the Whitehall source.

One way was to stretch Putin and his army so thinly that he was forced to give up, the source said, adding that no matter what the president’s threshold for pain was, he could not sustain the war indefinitely. “2024 isn’t about big operational success – there’s unlikely to be a big breakthrough this year. 2024 is about stretching Putin into 2025 and beyond – effectively calling his bluff and testing his resolve.”

A policeman examines the damage outside an apartment building after the overnight Russian drones attack in Kharkiv. Picture: AFP.

There is nervousness across Europe that if Trump wins the election, US support for Ukraine could evaporate. The unpredictability has left European nations trying to plan for any outcome.

Although he did not comment on a future US presidency, Grant Shapps, the UK defence secretary, said he was speaking to his counterparts in Europe about the need to back Ukraine in its “darkest hour”. He said: “We need to pull together to help them in a war that will define Europe for decades.”

Some western officials believe Ukraine can continue to hold territory without the support of America, which has given Ukraine billions of dollars in aid since the war began. “It is a lot easier to keep Ukraine, defensively, able to defend the gains it has made than it is to go on the offensive,” said one official.

The British Ministry of Defence said last weekend that Russia would have sustained more than half a million personnel killed and wounded in the conflict by 2025 if casualties continued at the present rate. The average daily number of Russian troops injured or killed rose by almost 300 per day over 2023 compared with 2022, according to the latest defence intelligence update. Nearly 40 per cent of all Russian public expenditure goes on defence, more than health and education combined.

Yet many Ukrainians are growing weary of the war. One Ukrainian military source admitted that people were talking of a truce, yet there were questions about what the price would be.

In December the EU failed to agree a euros 50 billion financial aid package to Ukraine after Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, vetoed it. In the US, Republicans have blocked plans by President Biden to give Ukraine another dollars 60 billion. The military source said Ukrainians were “feeling themselves abandoned looking on political disputes in the EU and the USA”.

“The UK is the only one who is staying with us firmly,” the source said, although the UK has not yet announced its funding for Ukraine this year. The UK’s weapons stockpiles were so diminished that it was better for them to lobby the Germans, the source said.

Mykhailo Chaplyha, a political commentator and former vice-ombudsman of Ukraine, believed that most people in Ukraine wanted a truce but were “afraid to admit it to themselves” – anyone who dared to think of a truce would become an “outcast and traitor”.

One Ukrainian former official said President Zelensky was losing support and that there was no strategy. “It is nonsense to send in our soldiers to die if we don’t have enough armament and resources to win militarily,” he said.

The Times