Western defence is too fragmented, too slow to respond, and will be attacked by Putin’s Russia if it doesn’t do more to help Ukraine, their foreign minister says in a rebuke of Europe’s response to the Russian invasion.
Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba appears to have admonished Western nations, who he accuses of doing too little and too late, in the actions taken in the aftermath of the nearly two-year-long reinvasion of his country by Russia. Speaking of the Western response, Kuleba told the Kyiv Independent that Europe has apparently forgotten how war works and hasn’t made the steps he wants to see in activating a wartime economy to produce weapons.
He told the paper: “Europe doesn’t know how to fight wars. The production of weapons is not the most popular area of business… Unfortunately, our friends spent too much time deliberating on how and when to ramp up their production of weapons and ammunition”.
While European-made weaponry has a superiority of technological sophistication, Kuleba said, it simply can’t be made in sufficient quantities. The minister compared this to Russia, where the armaments industry is state-owned and despite Western sanctions has been rapidly expanded to feed the war machine.
Kuleba said he had an answer to overcome these difficulties, however: unifying all Western arms companies and forgetting niceties over intellectual property and copyright. He said: “Europe clearly has an advantage in its technology. The problem and challenge they face is scaling up that technology’s production.
“I regret to say it, but this will not be enough if the situation doesn’t change. And Russia will be ahead of us… The solution is to create a certain level of alignment of all defense industries of the EU, the United States, and like-minded countries. For them to work as one whole system.”
Europe not knowing “how to fight wars” has serious consequences not just for Ukraine, but for Europe itself, Kuleba warned. “The security of Europan countries” is at stake, he said, remarking: “Because if anyone believes that Putin will not dare to attack a NATO country if he wins in Ukraine, that person is either naive or is pursuing Russian interests in this discourse.”
Ukraine has had a difficult year in terms of its international partners. After receiving huge amounts of NATO equipment and support in the run-up to the vaunted “Spring Offensive”, the assault failed to meaningfully materialise, and while wish to admit it that failure to perform seems to have made donors reluctant to give more. This was followed by the Hamas terror attack on Israel, which has turned the urgent attention of the world away from Kyiv.
Nevertheless, Kuleba says he is optimistic the over 100-billion dollars of potential aid form the U.S. and EU will come, and even if it doesn’t he says it isn’t the end of Ukraine, but it will mean the war will be longer and deadlier. The minister told the Independent that the West had a choice, pay now and save lives, or pay more later when the hand is forced.
That the West doesn’t really understand warfare anymore has been repeated by Ukrainian leaders, from the head of their army who decried the NATO doctrine his men had been taught in the run-up to the Spring Offensive as being useless, to President Zelensky himself who has chided American observers for expecting the war to be more like a Hollywood film: fast-paced and with a happy ending.
Kuleba has launched such criticism too, and in September told foreigners criticising the slow progress of the counter offensive to “shut up”, and come to Ukraine and try fighting for themselves.
Critique from Ukraine aside, the European Union is not short of internal concern that it has been too slow to react to Russian aggression and simply isn’t in a position to even defend itself, never mind aid the defence of Ukraine. Professor Katarzyna Pisarska of the Warsaw Security Forum warned this month that Europe is heading for an “era of wars” but had failed to realise this so far, and said the continent should ready itself to say goodbye to the comfortable “welfare state” era under the protective American umbrella and transition to a war economy.
Warning American interest in Europe was waning and shifting to the Pacific, Professor Pisarska said: “When do preparations for this scenario need to begin? They should have started yesterday… We can, like Emmanuel Macron, speak of “European autonomy”. But what does that mean? Can France station 10,000 soldiers in Poland tomorrow? Can Germany effectively defend NATO’s eastern flank? Credible deterrence is needed. We currently only have that with the Americans.”
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