The wheels of the European Union machine turn slowly. Big decisions are usually preceded by weeks, or months, of lower level discussions between diplomats, and a fair amount of political positioning and hand-wringing by governments.
But you can feel the pace of things change in Brussels as a hard deadline approaches. This is one such week.
“It is crunch time for Europe and Ukraine,” Denmark’s foreign minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said on Monday morning.
The EU’s top representative on foreign affairs, Kaja Kallas, similarly described it as a “make-or-break” moment for Ukraine, as parallel negotiations take place on a US-brokered peace proposal and a plan in Brussels to finance a large loan to help keep Kyiv in the fight should ceasefire talks stall again.
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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has signalled that Ukraine might let go of its ambition to join the Nato military alliance, provided the US and other western allies agree to guarantee Ukraine’s security, to deter any Russian threat.
So far, it seems all the concessions in the negotiations have come from the Ukrainian side. Russian president Vladimir Putin has shown little sign of compromise.
European leaders fear Washington will put pressure on Ukraine to sign a peace deal that overly favours Moscow.
Their real worry is that a shaky truce will afford Russia a chance to regroup and find some pretext to launch another attack on Kyiv in a few years’ time.
Hence the insistence from Zelenskiy that Ukraine will need solid guarantees the US will lend the threat of its military might to ward off such a scenario.
One thing Europe can do is help to plug a financial hole faced by Ukraine and shore up Kyiv’s ability to hold off further Russian advances on the battlefield.
The leaders of the EU’s 27 states fly in to Brussels for a summit which begins on Thursday. They are not expected to leave until a decision has been taken on how to fund a large package of financial support for Ukraine.
There is a proposal to use Russian state assets, frozen in Europe by economic sanctions since the start of the war, to fund a €90 billion loan to Kyiv.
The Belgian government opposes the so-called reparations loan for fear it will be hurt by the legal and political fallout. The assets are frozen in Euroclear, a securities depository housing other countries’ government bonds in Belgium. Intensive efforts are under way to change the Belgian government’s view.
Failing to land an agreement this week would be very damaging for Europe, particularly now that Ukraine needs all the help it can get from its friends.
