loading . . . Europe's great power move: EU secures Ukraine funding In this video, I discuss the EU's decision to allocate 90 billion euros for Ukraine to fund the war over the coming two years. It's one of the most important strategic decisions made over the last year. This is incredibly bad news for Russia, and it shows how Europe is beginning to act with strategic autonomy.
Watch the video on the website or read the transcript below.
Best,
Anders
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### _Transcript:_
The EU countries have agreed on a model for how they are going to finance Ukraine's war in the coming two years. This is incredibly important, and it's incredibly bad news for Russia. And not least, it provides a hint of how Europe will function as a strategic actor in the absence of American leadership. So let's talk about it.
The EU countries have agreed on a model where they will provide a loan to Ukraine that is worth 90 billion euros to cover the war in 2026 and 2027. I think a lot of the media coverage of this has been somewhat off. I don't think there's been enough coverage, that's the first thing. Other stories, at least here in Denmark, have dominated the news. But also, I've seen a lot of rather sort of strange takes, honestly, where it's portrayed as if this is somehow a bad result or an embarrassment for Europe, when in fact, I think it's quite the opposite.
I've been saying for a long time that if you want to follow a set of negotiations here in December, then don't follow the peace talks. That is just political theater. Instead, follow the negotiations in the EU about securing finances for Ukraine in the coming years. This is where the actually important things happen. This is where things can have an impact and where the war can be decided.
Since Donald Trump came into office and stopped providing aid to Ukraine, it's been up to the European countries to finance Ukraine's war and to ensure that the country maintains a robust war economy so that they can continue the fight against Russia.
Ukraine is facing enormous problems with balancing its budget for 2026. And without a strong commitment from the European countries, it is questionable whether things could have continued. And by continued, I mean ultimately, Ukraine could potentially have lost the war in 2026. They were at a point where without securing more external funding, it's questionable whether they would have enough money for salaries for the soldiers and to cover all kinds of fundamental and basic expenses.
But now that the EU countries have agreed on how to support Ukraine in the coming two years, things look much better, much more stable for Ukraine, and they can start planning ahead.
Many people in the press have been commenting that it is somehow a failure for Europe, or or at least for some European countries, such as Germany, because the model did not actually mean that the frozen Russian assets in Europe are immediately given to Ukraine. But for Ukraine, it does not matter where this money comes from. This is an internal discussion that we can have in Western Europe about how we want to find the money for this. But now, just a different model was found. And for Ukraine, that is just as good. The important thing is just that they get the money.
And frankly, to me, it's a little difficult to see the difference between the model where we gave the Russian frozen assets and then what came here. Because the way this is constructed is that the money is currently being given as a loan from the EU to Ukraine, but when this loan is eventually to be paid back, it will be paid back with the frozen Russian money. So it's not confiscated now. The Russian money is still there, but it is earmarked to paying back this loan for Ukraine in the future, which to me looks like we're going to end up more or less in the same place.
A question I have been asked quite a bit today by journalists is what extra things is Ukraine going to be able to buy with these 90 billion euros and how is this going to change the war? I think that's the wrong perspective because fundamentally what this funding will do is that it will allow Ukraine to continue the war, as they have been doing for the last four years, so that now they can also fight in year five and year six. What was at stake was essentially that Ukraine was facing a catastrophe if this funding had not come. But now that it's there, the war effort can continue and the catastrophe will not happen.
So we're not going to see some dramatic increase in Ukraine's fighting power as a result of this 90 billion euro package. What we're going to see is that there won't be a decline. But that's also incredibly important because this is a war of attrition. And in a war of attrition, the side that wins is the one that can continue fighting the longest.
It's essentially a war on war economies and it's the economy that will decide who wins in the end. The Russian economy right now is under a lot of pressure. But until the EU made this decision, there was a lot of optimism, actually, in Russia that even though their economy is struggling, they would be able to last longer than Ukraine. Ukraine was facing disaster in 2026, and the Russian war economy, as bad as it is, can probably make it until that.
But now, with this financing that the Europeans came up with, suddenly the Russians are facing a totally different situation where they won't just have to last maybe six months more, but they will have to last several years more because Ukraine's war economy has been secured.
From Moscow's point of view, this totally changes the strategic calculus. It's quite frankly a disaster because it raises serious questions about whether the demands that Russia is making are realistic and make sense, or if they will have to lower their expectations of what they can get out of a peace settlement. Does this mean that they will have to engage in negotiations with a different mindset where they will be more willing to make compromises?
These are the questions this would raise in Moscow. I would probably not expect a rapid change in the Russian approach to negotiations because Putin still thinks he's going to win this war regardless. He sees that as kind of inevitable. But he is visibly annoyed that the Europeans keep supporting Ukraine in a way that makes it really hard for him to win. This means that things will take much longer than they ought to, and he will have to spend many more resources than he believes should have been necessary.
Increasingly, we're seeing this frustration among the Russians with Europe. They're talking about how it's the warmongers in Europe who keep the war going, and that Europe is the obstacle to peace, and Putin is talking about war with Europe, and how the Europeans apparently want war with Russia, and he's ready. The other day, he talked about the European leaders being little swines that will need to be replaced. So increasingly, we are seeing visible signs of frustration in Moscow with the Europeans.
And that leads me to something that I think is perhaps the bigger takeaway from all this, and that is a discussion of what European leadership in the world actually looks like. There's been a lot of talk about how it's necessary for Europe to start emerging from the shadows of the United States and taking on the role of an entity with agency in the world. So, Europe has to demonstrate that they are capable of acting strategically in an era where they can't rely on the United States anymore. There's been a lot of discussion about strategic autonomy, as the French like to call it.
For a long time, there's been a lot of criticism of the European leaders for not taking responsibility and showing leadership and demonstrating that Europe is powerful. The Europeans will be talking a lot, but they will do little. And in the end, they will always just follow in the footsteps of the United States because that's what they've always done.
So I think it's appropriate to have a discussion about what European leadership and strategic autonomy would actually look like. How would we recognize on the world stage that this is happening? And there is perhaps a tendency to overestimate how spectacular it would be and to underestimate the extent to which strategic autonomy will in practice just play out as growing frustration in other countries about how the Europeans are an annoying obstacle to things that they want to do but that are not necessarily in Europe's interest.
So the kind of frustration that we are now seeing in Moscow is exactly what we should expect when Europe starts acting more like a great power player, as someone who sets an agenda that the great powers will have to adapt to. And it's not only in Moscow that we're seeing this, we're seeing the same in Washington. Donald Trump is also increasingly portraying the Europeans as the problem and the reason why there can't be peace in Europe, because the Europeans are an obstacle to him imposing a bad peace deal on Ukraine.
There's been a lot of talk about how Russia and the United States are having negotiations. We're seeing these great power negotiations about European security, but without the Europeans being present at the table. And there's been a lot of discussion about how the Europeans could do something to ensure that they will get a seat at that table when the decisions are being made.
But that is exactly what Europe is doing now. With this move to ensure funding for Ukraine for the next two or three years, it's really difficult not to give Europe a seat at the table because it's the Europeans that make the decisions that actually matter.
This is something that neither the Americans nor the Russians want. But Europe is taking concrete steps that others will just have to adapt to and to accept. Europe is behaving like a great power with this move. I think that has been underestimated in the media coverage that we've seen so far about the deal that was made in Brussels.
Does this mean that everything is now great in European politics and that we will never more see infighting and European countries being incapable of making decisions and things like that? Of course not. But I think it's important to recognize when Europe actually is beginning to do some of these things that we have been talking about so much. And what we're seeing is actually what we would expect to see in terms of frustration in the other great powers when Europe starts to do things that will restrain their ability to do what they want.
Europe acting like a great power, it would never play out in the way that Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin would stand up and acknowledge that by saying, "wow, Europe, that's really impressive, what a great power move." That's not what it would look like. Rather, what they would do is that they would express that whatever the Europeans are doing is incredibly annoying and super frustrating, and they would be calling the European leaders all kinds of bad names.
That is what Europe acting as a great power would look like, and that's exactly what we're seeing.
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