The EU owes Ukraine an apology
“I need ammunition, not a ride” replied President Zelensky to the American offer to evacuate him as the Russians invaded. He still does. His forces are being out-shelled three-to-one every day. He has been touring Europe’s capitals and the G7 over a year later, with the same desperate requests for more ammunition alongside new drones and missiles. Why? Week after week military support from the West seems to have been drip-fed – first, some shells, then missiles, then more powerful missiles, then some armoured vehicles, then handfuls of tanks, and now possibly some fighter jets.
That Ukraine isn’t a member of Nato isn’t relevant. Any country has the right both to defend itself and to ask its friends for help. Some have stepped up promptly – with the US, ourselves and Poland leading the way. But why has the rest of Europe been so slow?
Last Sunday, President von der Leyen told the Charlemagne prize-giving that “Ukraine’s forces are also fighting for our freedom and our values”. Yet the EU’s response has been shocking. A couple of weeks ago, member states finally approved what it laughably called a “fast-track” scheme to purchase and supply ammunition to Ukraine by 1 October, 19 months after the invasion. They’re still arguing about whether procurement should be handled via the European Defence Agency or by individual countries; some even want purchasing restricted to EU suppliers.
The defence firms are ready to step up. They need a more flexible pipeline of orders that can be accelerated or decelerated to match Ukraine’s demands. The allies should be pooling orders, encouraging purchasing by smaller consortia, and sharing information about forward requirements to incentivise investment in new production. We should also change the narrative around inventories. Ample levels of unused stocks are not profligate: like our nuclear submarines they are part of deterrence, in use every day.
And the City of London can do more. Defence companies should not be shunned by investment advisers in terms of ESG compliance: keeping us all safe is a prerequisite to keeping us green or diverse. Defence equipment also needs a more sophisticated market: it shouldn’t be impossible to devise forward purchasing arrangements along the lines we have developed for investment in new energy.
Nato, too, should do better. The alliance has common procurement machinery but simply isn’t using it. The forthcoming summit in Vilnius should review the commitment at the Wales summit in 2014 to spend a minimum of 2 per cent of GDP on defence by next year. Only seven of 30 members do so; worse still, 12 of the rest, by no means the poorest, don’t even spend 1.5 per cent.
A minimum of 2.5 per cent should be the new target. Here in the UK we spend under 2.2 per cent. Our ambition, not even a “target”, is to reach 2.5 per cent by 2030. But at the start of this century, we were spending 2.7 per cent. In the long run weakness in defence isn’t just risky: it’s expensive. Putin wasn’t deterred from invading Ukraine. So what the West failed to spend on defence, we now spend on energy subsidies, on housing refugees, and coping with slower growth. When the war ends, we will have to spend more again on the reconstruction of Ukraine.
This is our war, too. If Putin wins in Ukraine, no democracy is safe: he can go on to win in Moldova and Georgia, and threaten the Baltic states. He badly underestimated Ukrainian resistance and courage. But he may not be underestimating the political will of the West. Nine years in which only seven countries meet the Nato defence spending target? Nineteen months for the EU just to organise an ammunition tender? Every day of those 19 months Ukrainian soldiers have been fighting and dying. Zelensky deserves an apology as much as the Charlemagne prize.
