The EU is increasing military aid to Ukraine when Sweden moves towards NATO membership
Wangels (Germany) (AFP) – Europe pledged another half a billion dollars in military aid to Kyiv on Friday and Sweden approached NATO as the war in Ukraine entered its 12th week.
At a meeting with the world’s most powerful democracies, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell promised Ukraine another € 500 million ($ 520 million), bringing the bloc’s total military aid to € 2 billion.
“The recipe is clear – more of the same,” Borrell said.
A group of seven foreign ministers is in the German seaside resort of Wangels, where they are discussing the crisis with counterparts from Ukraine and Moldova.
“It is very important at this point that we continue to put pressure on Vladimir Putin by providing Ukraine with more weapons, by increasing sanctions,” said British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian declared that the G7 would provide support “in the long run … until Ukraine’s victory.”
President Vladimir Putin invaded Russia’s neighbor on February 24 and unleashed a worldwide shock that has been felt especially in northern and eastern Europe.
On Thursday, Finland’s leaders recommended that their country renounce its decades-long position of neutrality and join NATO as soon as possible.
In Sweden, a security policy review of the parliamentary parties on Friday highlighted the advantage of becoming a member of the alliance.
“Swedish NATO membership would raise the threshold for military conflicts and thus have a deterrent effect in northern Europe,” it said.
“Within the framework of the current cooperation, there is no guarantee that Sweden would receive help if it was the target of a serious threat or attack,” it says.
The report ended with a concrete recommendation, even though expectations are high. Sweden will follow Finland when the government announces its decisions in the coming days.
Cruise missiles
Many analysts see the war turning into a fierce conflict after expectations of a lightning victory of Russia erupted.
After several weeks, Russia abandoned attempts to capture the capital Kyiv when the Ukrainian army defended hard and the West began pumping in billions of dollars in military aid.
Since then, Russia has focused its efforts on the eastern Donbas region, where it has supported ethnic Russian separatists.
The Ukrainian army said on Friday that Russian artillery reinforcements had been deployed to bomb villages in the northeastern Chernigiv region, near the Russian border.
Russian troops are trying to establish “full control” over the eastern city of Rubizhne, it is said.
Artillery and air force strikes the southern port city of Mariupol, where a number of Ukrainian troops are holding out at a huge steelworks despite a week-long siege, it is said.
The Russians are now “massively” using supersonic cruise missiles against ships to target civilian infrastructure, Ukrainian Armed Forces chief Valery Zaluzhny said on Facebook.
“One of the reasons for the enemy’s transition to this tactic is the refusal to use aviation, which suffers heavy losses,” he said.
War crimes
More than six million people have fled Ukraine, more than half of whom have gone to neighboring Poland, according to the UN refugee agency.
There are more stories of torture, sexual violence and indiscriminate destruction of Russian troops.
Witnesses who spoke to AFP in the village of Stepanki, near the eastern regional capital of Kharkiv, accused Russian forces of shelling a home and killing several people.
They said six people living in the house were drinking tea in the yard as a Russian tank approached.
“They started going into the house to hide,” said Olga Karpenko, 52, whose daughter was among those killed. The thought took aim and shot at them as they entered the house.
“Four people died, two were injured. My daughter died of a shrapnel wound to the back of her head,” Karpenko said.
The UN Human Rights Council on Thursday voted overwhelmingly – in a session boycotted by Russia – to investigate allegations of atrocities in the Kyiv, Chernigiv, Kharkiv and Sumy regions.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has already launched its own investigation and is sending investigators to the suburb of Bucha in Kyiv.
Gas supply
Economists on Friday bounced over the effects of a decline in Russia’s gas supply to Europe, where several countries, including Germany, are heavily dependent on Russian energy.
Russian energy giant Gazprom announced on Thursday that it would stop supplying gas via the Polish part of the Yamal-Europe pipeline following retaliatory sanctions imposed by Moscow against Western companies.
Gazprom also said that gas transported to Europe via a location in Ukraine had decreased by a third.
Ole Hvalbye, a specialist at the Scandinavian bank SEB, said that the loss through Ukraine amounted to about two percent of European gas consumption, while the Polish pipeline had been transporting some gas for several months.
The case is “not dramatic … (but) sends a signal about what might happen next,” he said.
Last year, Russian imports accounted for almost 40 percent of EU gas consumption.
© 2022 AFP