From Zelenskyy’s European tour to the NATO meeting to the Munich Security Conference – this is what the continent has been talking about this week.
Zelenskyy’s flying visit
Last week marked the first European tour of Volodymyr Zelenskyy since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. After London, where he received a solemn promise of fighter jets and training for pilots, and a dinner in Paris with French President Macron and German Chancellor Scholz, the Ukrainian President finally landed in Brussels, asking for weapons, artillery, and fighter jets. Fortunately, notwithstanding the serious leak that preceded Zelenskyy’s visit to Brussels, everything went according to the script. With the usual mastery in taking time but being prompt with tweets and selfies, EU leaders and officials showed once more that their support is mainly about symbolics. But for Ukrainians, time is pressing, and the country needs weapons.
Need for speed, tanks
Unlike Member States, the message was clearly received by NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. Before a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels, Stoltenberg recognised Western countries needed to boost ammunition supplies to Kyiv. However, he also warned that any decision on fighter jets would be reserved for the future since pilots first need to be trained. But of course, the question is whether other countries will join the UK in starting such training so that Ukraine can eventually use the jets if needed. For his part, Stoltenberg seemed to discourage spending too much time talking about jets, viewing it as a distraction from the more urgent need to increase deliveries available now. In the meantime, if it were not for the dramatic circumstance of war, it would have been a leisurely pursuit to follow the German Einsamkeit (solitude) over tanks delivery: after being urged (sayread, “finger-pointed”) to export Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, German Chancellor Scholz is starting to ring around European capitals to ensure that the pledges other leaders have made are delivered in time. For now, Paris and Madrid are not picking up.
Cloudy with a chance of fresh sanctions
Following the UK, yesterday EU ambassadors and experts met to discuss the 10th sanctions package against Russia after having received comments from their capitals on the Commission’s plans. The fresh package contains sanctions against individuals, financial sanctions, and trade bans, but there is new information on a particularly interesting new proposal that would prevent Russia from circumventing oil sanctions: every time the bloc hits a Russian source of financing, a new company appears that takes the place of the old one. More details to come on the Russian whac-a-mole. In the meantime, you can find an interesting reading about the impact of sanctions on the Russian economy here.
Munich Security Conference, courtesy of China
As the world’s security elites gather in Munich on Friday, their mobile phones will be connecting to Chinese telecoms equipment surrounding the venue. VIPs such as U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and hundreds more heads of state and government, ministers and foreign dignitaries will be surrounded by multiple telecommunication antennas poking between church steeples, with many of them equipped with hardware supplied by controversial Chinese tech giant Huawei. From the five-star Hotel Bayerischer Hof venue, we are convinced that world leaders will not go through a lot of stress with the potential threat, but after the Chinese balloon saga we covered last week, it is legitimate to wonder whether Western leaders need a refresher course covering the Precautionary Principle.
