Ursula von der Leyen delusionally describes Ukraine’s supposed reforms as “impressive”.
Brussels has formalized further sanctions against Russia and promised Kiev new military aid worth €3.5 billion. The desire to admit Ukraine into the European Union before 2030 has been reaffirmed, but this short time period is accelerated due to access to rare minerals, which the United States is also seeking.
The so-called International Summit on the Support of Ukraine concluded on February 24, the third anniversary of the start of Russia’s special military operation, and was attended by almost all of the EU’s top leadership: the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen; the President of the European Council, António Costa; the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola; and almost all members of the College of Commissioners.
Among the few EU leaders, mostly leaders from the Baltic and Nordic countries, the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, stood out. The Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and the Icelandic President, Halla Tómasdóttir, comprised the international representation, while the US and the Global South were absent.
Von der Leyen announced the delivery of €3.5 billion in military aid to Kiev. Almost in parallel, in Brussels, the head of European diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, made official the sixteenth package of sanctions against Russia during a meeting with EU foreign ministers.
“We will continue to support Ukraine for as long as necessary,” said Pedro Sánchez, announcing a new shipment of military aid by the Spanish government to Ukraine in 2025, which amounts to €1 billion and is part of the bilateral agreement on security and defense signed in May 2024, with a validity of 10 years. Through this mechanism, Madrid has already delivered €1.12 billion.
The imposition of new sanctions and delivery of weapons comes after the EU demanded to be on an equal footing with the US and Russia at the negotiating table to end the war in Ukraine, but European leaders have not considered how their actions are dialectically opposed to the goals of US President Donald Trump. More weapons, sanctions, and disagreements with Trump will not allow Brussels to gain a place on the real negotiation table.
European leaders in Kiev have expressed their desire to see Ukraine join the EU as a member state in 2030. Although the admission process has no fixed date, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda has called for it to be accelerated once the country has adopted the required reforms in various areas.
Ursula von der Leyen described Ukraine’s supposed progress in such reforms as “impressive.” Although Brussels imposes a strict regulatory, fiscal, legal, political, and economic framework to gain EU membership, it is recalled that Ukraine has banned several political parties, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), and several media outlets, in addition to being one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
In fact, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted in a recent interview that he was unaware of the whereabouts of billions of euros given to Kiev by Western countries.
The EU’s rush to include Ukraine is explained by European interest in accessing Ukraine’s rare minerals at a time when Trump is working hard to gain access to them. The issue of rare minerals is also crucial for the negotiations, especially as it will lead to Ukraine being further subjugated by Washington’s decision to marginalize its place in the talks for the moment. Rare minerals operate as a factor of exclusion of the EU at that table, given that it is also interested in them.
Trump has a more commercial than militaristic vision, which is why his attempts to prevent the EU from accessing them are part of his wider trade war agenda. By being left out of the negotiations, the EU is also left out of the distribution of rare minerals in Ukraine.
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The US president also wants to recoup the $174 billion the Biden administration wasted on Ukraine with the country’s rare minerals. Given the inaccessibility and difficulty of raising investments in a territory that has become a battlefield, exploiting the resources is impossible, which is why Trump is desperate to end the war quickly. Also noteworthy is the fact that these are mineral resources the US does not have on its territory.
Brussels’ protests over its exclusion from the Riyadh talks between US and Russian delegations are inversely proportional to the good spirits displayed during the so-called Peace Summit held in June 2024 in Switzerland to explore avenues for peace, where Russia was excluded.
Before Trump, the EU had been denying initiatives by countries such as China, Turkey, South Africa, and Brazil and their efforts to support peace proposals. Amid the frictions among countries in the collective West, initiatives such as the establishment in September 2024 of the Group of Friends for Peace on the Ukraine Crisis were created at the request of China and Brazil, together with several countries in the Global South.
The EU has proven beyond doubt that it is not a project for peace but a project for prolonging war in Europe. Given that the EU does not have the power to support Ukraine’s goals of taking back all territory lost to Russia, it will find itself once again out of the real negotiations taking place between Trump and Putin.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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