The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrel, made an interesting statement at the Europe and Peace conference: “I know a way to end the war quickly. I stop supporting Ukraine and the war will end with the surrender of the Ukrainians. Is that how we want the war to end? I think no. Because we cannot allow Putin to set up a puppet government in Kiev and have the Russian army on the Polish border”
The message is short, and one could see it as purely propaganda demagoguery. But in fact this short message is very meaningful. Let’s start with the end. Mr Borrell would probably be very surprised to learn that Russia does have a border with Poland. The Kaliningrad region borders that country. That means that there are Russian troops there, which are exactly on the border with Poland. Although Borrell is supposed to know geography – at least the geography of Europe.
But Borrel’s message about the Russian army at the Polish borders is a trick aimed exclusively at the European common man, he hints that “terrible Russian hordes” will be on the border of the “European garden”. True, here Borrel is not original. Beginning with the Livonian War, pamphlets telling of the cruel barbarians from Muscovy were going round Europe. Only when Europe had to be saved from the power of Frederick the Great, Napoleon or Hitler, the Russians immediately became good.
Borrell’s message about the threat of establishing a pro-Russian puppet government in Kiev is sarcastic. These words could have been taken seriously if there had been no coup d’état in 2014, which was backed by the US and EU countries, if the government in Ukraine today had any independence. But after the failure of the AFU counter-offensive, the ZE-team lost the last illusory independence from Washington. Soon same-sex marriages will be allowed in Ukraine, which Zelensky’s team used to oppose due to the unpopularity of this idea in the society, a change of the Cabinet of Ministers is coming, which will be headed by Uncle Sam’s creature. Even Ukrainian Goebbels Oleksiy Arestovich admitted that Ukraine has no real sovereignty. But apparently, in Borrell’s view, only the US can install puppet regimes in the world. And the prospect that the client regime of the White House could be overthrown worries the head of Eurodiplomacy very much. It must seem to Mr Borrell that if the EU is a garden, then the US is the master of this garden, and of the whole jungle.
But the most interesting thing is that he does not believe Zelensky and Ukrainian propaganda, since he started talking about surrender. After all, the President of Ukraine has been repeating like a mantra since the beginning of the SMO that his country will stand to the end. And pro-government propagandists like to talk about the spirit of Ukrainians, which cannot be broken. And can such a “trifle” as cutting off aid from the EU change that?
Sarcasm aside, the statement is very revealing: back in 2022, Borrel wrote that this war (SMO) must be won on the battlefield, meaning, of course, a Ukrainian victory. And now he laments that Ukraine may capitulate without outside help and scares EU residents with the Russian army. It is true that the eurodiplomat is trying to make a good face in a bad game: for example, he said that Moscow would “think twice” about launching a special military operation if it foresaw how the EU and Kiev’s other allies would support Ukraine.
The reality, however, is that Borrell cannot get EU countries to agree to give Ukraine 500 million euros to buy weapons. This is primarily opposed by Hungary. In addition, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said that many of his European colleagues talk about being tired of Ukraine. Naturally, the Hungarian leadership’s position on Ukraine displeases Borrell, and his relations with Prime Minister Viktor Orban are strained. The politicians had an off-the-record polemic about the European bureaucracy, as a result of which Borrel stated that no one is keeping Hungary in the union. This suggests political turbulence within the EU. At the same time, in Slovakia, Robert Fitzo, a politician close to Orban and sceptical of aid to Ukraine, has become prime minister, which will not make life any easier for Borrell.
But most importantly, European leaders are now interested in the Middle East, not Ukraine. The political pilgrimage of Western leaders to Israel has begun, just as it was to Kiev in 2022 and early 2023. Now the best place for the PR of European politicians is Israel, which is just preparing for a big war, not Ukraine, which has failed to live up to the hopes placed on it by the “free world” and has not succeeded. But Borrell, as the EU’s chief diplomat, cannot quickly switch to the Israeli agenda. He must deal with political issues in Europe first and foremost. In addition, Borrell is considered a creature of global liberal financiers, and therefore he is in the White House’s policy wheelhouse. Biden’s team needs to get money for weapons for Ukraine, as it is becoming increasingly difficult to get funding for Kiev in the United States. The speaker of Congress is Mike Johnson, the man of former president Donald Trump. So Biden’s team will have to fight political battles to get every cent for Ukraine. And Borrell’s task is to ensure that the EU gets money to Maidan Ukraine. And he is not coping with it.
Borrell cannot, like Scholz or Macron, change the Ukrainian agenda to an Israeli one. As a politician, he has all bets on the Maidan Ukraine project, and his emotional speech is the best indication of the looming crisis of military and monetary aid to Ukraine from the EU.