Setting the scene for EU leaders’ informal summit in Copenhagen on Wednesday, Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen warned that Russia is already involved in a “hybrid war” in Europe and French president Emmanuel Macron said the continent was already “in a confrontation with Russia.”
The meeting, devoted to shoring up European support for Ukraine, heard leaders warn that Russia’s ambitions go far beyond Ukraine and that it has already started testing the defences of member states with significant and deliberate incursions by Russian drones from Poland to Estonia and Denmark. For the first time in memory Nato allies’ jets have been shooting down intruders.
With President Trump a bystander unable – or perhaps unwilling – to restrain President Putin, EU states have already responded by promising to increase their defence budgets to up to five per cent of GDP. In Copenhagen they were working on practical measures to bolster Ukraine’s ability to fight on and also to protect the borders of member-states. These included new means of funding Kyiv and a drone wall” to knock out incoming Russian drones.
The latter idea, emanating first from the Baltic states, was backed by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in her recent state of the union speech in the aftermath of the 20-drone intrusion into Poland. It has since been discussed by EU defence ministers and welcomed by Nato. The latter also launched “Eastern Sentry”, a new military patrolling mission in eastern Europe by allies including Denmark, France, the UK and Germany.
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The ”drone wall” , a network of sensors and weapons to detect, track and neutralise intruding unmanned aircraft, would not be an EU wall as such, but a project to help finance interlinked, but independent , drone defences in member states along the continent’s borders. The Commission has yet to produce detailed plans and costings, and defence specialists say the science is still not there to implement such a plan in full.
The meeting was also the first opportunity for leaders to debate a proposal, also widely supported, to use some €140 billion in accumulated profits from Russian central bank assets frozen in Europe to fund a major loan to Ukraine. France and Belgium are wary, however, that the seizure of assets, or even of interest on them, would spook the markets by calling into question the security of the banking system
The commission presented capitals with its frozen-asset blueprint late last week in the hopes of securing support before a formal EU summit at the end of the month. The loan to Ukraine would be underwritten by member states, and Kyiv would only have to pay it back if and when Moscow agrees to pay reparations to Ukraine. And that, as of now, appears most unlikely.
