On March 5, the European Commission announced the EU's overall defense strategy proposal, which aims to revitalize its defense industry as a whole and allow the EU to enter a wartime economic model to assist Ukraine against Russia. Thierry Breton, the French EU Commissioner for Industry, said that in the current geopolitical context, Europe must take greater responsibility for its security, regardless of the outcome of our allies' elections every four years. This statement is clearly referring to Trump, who is likely to return to the White House next year.
According to Reuters, the European Commission proposes to establish an EU-level mechanism to help other countries **buy EU arms companies**, and give the EU the right to ask EU companies to give priority to **European orders (according to: It is estimated that in the Russian-Ukrainian war, European artillery shell manufacturers still use 40% of their production for non-EU countries other than Ukraine).
The proposal will initially provide only about 1.5 billion euros, but its focus is on establishing a legal framework for the EU to coordinate the procurement of all workers, which can be released and collected in the future. Breton has proposed a €100 billion ** at EU level for the defence programme.
Defence has always been the purview of EU member states, not Brussels, and countries are certainly reluctant to relinquish power. The problem is that the EU is an organization of many small countries, and its separate defense policies have made it impossible for the EU's overall economic and industrial strength to be reflected in its defense capabilities for a long time.
Although the Russian-Ukrainian war sounded the EU's national defense alert, with the Biden administration of the United States increasing the stationing of troops in Europe and military aid to Ukraine, Europe is generally only content to be led by the United States, while European countries mainly provide financial assistance and some key support, such as the Storm Shadow missiles of Britain and France, or the Leopard tank of Germany.
However, the possibility of Trump's return to North Korea, and his remarks encouraging Russia to attack NATO allies, have triggered the EU to accelerate defense integration and defense autonomy, hoping that it will no longer be affected by domestic political changes in the United States in the future.
The European Commission's proposal is still a long way from its successful implementation. After all, there will be elections to the European Parliament in June this year, and the European Commission will also be renewed. While European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who has announced her re-election bid, remains a big favourite, the way forward remains controversial – von der Leyen, for example, proposed the creation of the post of EU defense commissioner, but Breton has made it clear that the defence industry should fall directly under the purview of the EU commissioner for industry.
But regardless of the details, the EU's direction to strengthen its defense industry to aid Ukraine is clear. This time, the committee's proposal envisages adding Kyiv to its plans, even if Ukraine is not yet a member of the European Union.
In addition to consolidating and strengthening the EU's defense industry, the financial resources of aid to Ukraine are also an important issue. At present, the US $60 billion has not been approved by Congress, and EU countries are also considering a knife to the Russian central bank's roughly 190 billion euros of assets frozen in Belgium on the one hand.
The U.S. proposal is to directly confiscate these assets to aid Ukraine. However, the European powers, represented by Germany and France, have always been reluctant to break into the gray area of international law, and also hope to leave a slight incentive for peaceful coexistence with Russia in the future - after all, frozen assets can be returned, and confiscated assets are gone.
The EU is willing to consider using the annual interest income generated by these Russian assets to aid Ukraine. Last year, this figure was around 4.4 billion euros. Last month, the European Union issued a directive to place additional interest income generated on Russian assets, which it said could be used to fund a potential EU aid budget for Ukraine**. Von der Leyen also publicly advocated using the proceeds for purchases for Ukraine at the end of last month.
Since Ukraine is estimated to spend 100 billion euros a year to defend itself against the Russian invasion, and the World Bank's estimates show that the war has caused more than $480 billion in damage to Ukraine, and a huge amount of money will be needed to rebuild in the future, many experts are studying how to use financial means to maximize the amount of Russian assets that can be used to aid Ukraine, such as issuing bonds guaranteed by the income from its assets.
And as European countries gradually become apparent in their tendency to replace the role of American aid, various conflicts between Europe and Russia have also accelerated to the surface.
First of all, we have the striking rhetoric of the French ** Emmanuel Macron at the end of February that he did not rule out sending troops to Ukraine in order to achieve strategic ambiguity.
Although many Western countries from Germany, Poland to the United States have subsequently denied this possibility, and France** also clarified that the troop dispatch method considered by Macron does not include combat missions, but will only play the role of mine clearance, cyber defense, and local production, but Putin once again mentioned the possibility of using nuclear ** in his State of the Union address.
On February 26, 2024, Macron met with the German Chancellor at the Elysee Palace in Paris to attend the summit on aid to Ukraine. （reuters）
By March 1, RT TV editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan released a 38-minute recording of a conversation between senior German military officers, causing an uproar.
Among them, the officers discussed the refusal of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Olaf Scholz) to export to Ukraine the Taurus cruise missiles with a range of 500 kilometers, how they changed Scholz's decision, and even said that Scholz's opposition position was incomprehensible. During this period, they mentioned that British soldiers in Ukraine provided support for the British Storm Shadow missiles in Ukraine, and how Taurus could build the Crimean bridge.
The recording was confirmed to be true, and Germany was suddenly disgraced. The Russian side has also taken advantage of this to do its best to offensive. Russia pointed out that Germany had lost the power of reunification; The Kremlin, for its part, said that the German plan to attack Russian territory had been discussed in substance and concretely; Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, drew on the old days of Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, which is a contrast to today's.
Although Boris Pistorius, the defense minister of the SPD who belongs to the same party as Scholz, accused this of Russia's information war, the military's questioning of Scholz's refusal to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine has greatly increased the pressure on Scholz within Germany. From the opposition to the Green Party within the ruling coalition, they all actually support the export of Taurus missiles to Ukraine.
On March 5, German Defense Minister Pistorios admitted that the officers involved had not used secure communications to communicate. （reuters）
Britain also added a lip service here, encouraging Germany to follow the United Kingdom, which first exported long-range precision missiles to Ukraine.
Scholz was still sticking to his original decision until March 4. But how long he can hold out is questionable – especially after Russia so ruthlessly made public the recording of the hostile actions of the German high-level.
The above-mentioned developments also indicate that the conflict between Russia and European countries with the EU at its core will not be abated by the possible withdrawal of the United States from the front to aid Ukraine, but can be intensified because of it.
The Russian-Ukrainian war, from the perspective of the Russian side, is largely from NATO's eastward expansion, and the main actor behind it is the United States. However, after the war started, if Ukraine could not be won, it would be the European Union that would lose its geopolitical authority. Therefore, even if the United States goes away patting its ass under Trump's influence, it will be difficult for Europe to turn from Russia's secondary enemy into its main enemy.
The direct exchange of fire between Europe and Russia is still a low-probability event at the moment, but Ukraine has gradually evolved into a battlefield of geopolitical contest between Europe and Russia.
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