Five EU states have said Europe’s “future depends” on it urgently increasing support for Kyiv, as Ukraine and Russia exchanged hundreds of captives just a week after Moscow claimed that Ukrainian forces shot down a Russian military plane carrying prisoners of war.
Tens of billions of euro and dollars in proposed funding for Kyiv are now blocked due to political rows in Washington and Brussels, stoking fears for Ukraine’s defence almost two years into its all-out war with Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion force.
“We will do everything to ensure that the joint contribution from Europe is so huge that Ukraine can build on it and that Putin would not be able to count on our support waning at some point,” German chancellor Olaf Scholz told the Bundestag before an EU summit at which Hungary will face pressure to lift its opposition to a €50 billion, four-year aid package for Kyiv.
Mr Scholz also joined four other European leaders in urging EU members to renew and increase their commitment to Ukraine, and acknowledged that the bloc would fail to meet its promise to deliver a million artillery shells to Kyiv by the end of March.
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“The hard truth: we have fallen short of this goal. But we can’t just give up on our promise,” Mr Scholz wrote in the Financial Times with prime ministers Mette Frederiksen of Denmark, Petr Fiala of the Czech Republic, Estonia’s Kaja Kallas and Mark Rutte of the Netherlands.
“What is urgent today is to provide the ammunition and weapon systems… Now. Because new orders we place today will only reach the battlefield by next year. We must therefore insist on finding ways to accelerate the delivery of the promised artillery rounds to Ukraine,” they added.
“The burden is so great that all states need to do everything they can to support Ukraine,” they wrote. “Russia doesn’t wait for anybody and we need to act now. If Ukraine loses, the long-term consequences and costs will be much higher for all of us. We Europeans have a special responsibility. Therefore, we must act. Europe’s future depends on it.”
Russia says its defence industry is now on a war footing and rapidly increasing production, but output data cannot be verified. Moscow also uses attack drones made in Iran and missiles and shells supplied by North Korea.
“Listen, stop messing about here, guys. We got down to this in earnest in 2022. This equipment should have been operating at full capacity in 2023,” Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu told managers of an artillery plant in the Urals during a visit on Wednesday.
Ukraine said 207 of its soldiers and civilians had returned home and Russia said 195 of its servicemen had been freed in a prisoner swap.
Last Wednesday, Russian politicians said such arrangements could be suspended after Moscow accused Kyiv’s forces of shooting down a Russian military plane that was carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war to a planned exchange. Kyiv says it has seen no evidence that POWs were on the plane, which crashed near Russia’s border with Ukraine.
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