The United States would be evaluating the hypothesis of stopping all military aid to Ukraine. The news comes after the unprecedented clash of the White House between the US president, Donald Trump, and the Ukrainian one, Volodymyr Zelensky. The Republican should meet in the day with his main collaborators for national security, including the secretary of state Marco Rubio and the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, to evaluate and possibly act on a series of options with the intention of forcing Kiev to accept the US conditions for peace and the agreement on rare lands.
Among these hypotheses, the suspension or cancellation of American military aid, including the latest shipments of ammunition and equipment already authorized and paid during the presidency of Joe Biden. The New York Times reports it, citing an official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Botosta for Kiev (and the EU)
For Zelensky it would be terrible news. The Ukrainian leader repeatedly urged the United States to continue to send Ukraine weapons to strengthen the country’s position in the future peace negotiations with Russia.
The Trump administration, however, has never authorized new shipments of weapons to the nation, even if so far has not interrupted those announced under the previous Biden administration. Blocking those would also be a very hard blow for Kiev, who struggles to contain the assaults of the troops of Vladimir Putin. The United States provided Ukraine 65.9 billion dollars in military aid from the beginning of the large -scale invasion of Russia in February 2022.
And also for Europe such a decision would be a serious blow, with the countries of the European Union which, together with the United Kingdom, are trying to agree for a new support strategy to Kiev, who however needs large investments in the defense. After the meeting organized by British Premier Keir Starmer, in which, in addition to the EU countries, Canada and Turkey also participated, the next key appointment will be on Thursday 6 March, when the heads of state and government of the twenty -seven EU member states will meet in an extraordinary European Council.
The running to European rearmament
“The European Union is ready to work with all our European partners and other allies on a peace plan for Ukrainian who guarantees a right and lasting peace for the Ukrainian people”, assured the president of the European Council, Antonio Costa. “We have to learn from the past. We cannot repeat the Minsk experience. We cannot repeat the tragedy of Afghanistan. And for this we need strong guarantees of security. The creation of peace goes hand in hand with the maintenance of peace,” added Costa.
And for security guarantees you need weapons, and weapons cost: you have to find the money to pay it. For this purpose, before the extraordinary summit, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, will present some of his proposals to finance aid to Ukraine and European defense. One of these will be the suspension of the stability and growth pact for the expenses for the armaments, which would be excluded from the count of the national deficit with the activation of the so -called safeguard clause.
A bank for weapons
But another idea on the table is the creation of a European “rearm” bank, a sort of Bei of the defense, which could be born thanks to the payment of an initial capital and the guarantees provided by the participating countries, and then financed themselves on the markets and provide loans. It would be an EU tool, an intergovernmental fund that could be created even without the participation of the opposite countries, such as the Hungary of Viktor Orbán, and which could instead be extended to nations that are not part of the blockade, such as the United Kingdom and Norway.
In any case, European military spending seems destined to increase drastically, to fill the void that seems clear to the United States, which no longer want to deal with European security and which, according to some hypotheses, could soon leave NATO. French President Emmanuel Macron invited Europeans to drastically increase the annual defense expenditure, bringing it to over 3 percent of GDP.
“In the last three years, the Russians have spent 10 percent of their GDP for the defense. We must prepare what will come later, with a 3-3.5 percent goal,” Macron said in an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro.
