The dust had not even settled on the deadly attacks from Russian rocket strikes against civilians and critical infrastructure in Kyiv this week before the West was again being leaned on to increase its support.

Amid concern the barrage suggested a significant and sustained shift by the Russian military over the embarrassment of a bridge explosion in annexed Crimea, a senior aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hit the phones to some of Europe’s most influential journalists to get his message out.

A soldier passes the crater where a Russian missile struck a shopping area earlier in the day in Kupiansk.Credit:Getty

The only way to win the war unleashed by Russia, Mykhailo Podolyak said in an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro, was to “stop being afraid” of Moscow and help multiply Ukraine’s tactical victories.

“If Ukraine loses, Russia will dominate in Europe and impose its values on it. Ukraine has shown that it is capable of waging war, but we need help. It’s time to go the whole way – without fear,” Podolyak said.

“In the near future, we need to strengthen our air defence to protect the civilian population. And the Europeans are still wondering: ‘Should Ukrainians receive weapons?’.”

As the battle, more than 230 days long, grinds on into winter, there remain concerns among Western officials that European states, facing a sharp economic downturn, a cost-of-living crisis and energy shortages, are growing weary of the crisis.

A medical worker runs past a burning car after a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine.Credit:AP

Italy’s incoming new government, led by Nationalist leader Giorgia Meloni, has pledged its full support for Kyiv, but her coalition partners, the League and Forza Italia, have been much more ambivalent, reflecting their historically close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

So when United States President Joe Biden convened a meeting of nearly a dozen Western leaders via private video conference last month to discuss the war in Ukraine, he was intent to ensure they remained unified in punishing Russia, even as the Kremlin tries to weaponise energy and break resolve.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has this week followed, urging nations, and citizens, to stay the course and continue to support Ukraine, even in the face of “a difficult six months”.

Stoltenberg has described the past few weeks as a “pivotal moment for our security”.

“We have seen the most serious escalation of the war since the invasion in February,” he said during a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Brussels. “They are trying to illegally annex new Ukrainian lands. And we have seen the indiscriminate strikes against Ukrainian cities. And then of course we also have heard the nuclear threats coming from Moscow.”

The renewed effort has underscored fears in London, Brussels and Washington of a growing wariness that Moscow’s threats over cutting off oil and gas – its two biggest exports and increasingly the backbone of its economy – could successfully force fissures in what until now has been a largely united European front opposing Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Podolyak told a Spanish online newspaper elDiario that the proposition for EU leaders was simple.

“If Europe wants to get rid of all kinds of blackmail and pressure from Russia – and it’s not only the war in Ukraine, it’s also the migrant crisis, energy, economic, financial and political crises – we have to end this war in a fair way,” he said.

Russians shell Ukrainian positions in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine.Credit:AP

“We must not allow Russia to implement these crises. If today Europe, together with Ukraine, does not end the war properly, it will continue to have the same problems, but on a larger scale, because Russia will think that it has defeated Europe”.

At a meeting of International Monetary Fund member countries in Washington this week, representatives increased calls for an end to the war, which is having a sharply negative impact on global economic growth.

They were concerned about the duration of the war and its impact on inflation, which has triggered a sharp tightening of monetary policy in countries around the world.

“There is a sense this is serious, we need to work together,” Spanish Finance Minister Nadia Calvino, elected in January to head the IMF’s steering committee, said.

“The most dominant feeling is one of worry and uncertainty. We don’t know how long this war will last (and) what the implications may be.”

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and former advisor to US Secretary of State Colin Powell in the George W. Bush administration, while Putin is losing on the battlefield, he is taking the war to Europe – with his principal weapon being natural gas.

“What he’s hoping is that in a long, cold winter, the Europeans will come to regret their support economically and militarily for Ukraine,” he said.

People wait for a bus to leave Kupiansk on Thursday.Credit:Getty

Putin, who has said the West is to blame for intensifying the global energy crisis, told a Moscow energy forum on Wednesday that gas taps can be still turned on for Russian supplies to the EU, via the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. But despite his declaration, a resumption of gas supplies remains unlikely.

Nord Stream 2 was halted because of the invasion, and Russia’s gas delivery to Europe using Nord Stream 1 has been severely disrupted for months, with Russia blaming technical problems and recent leaks.

Haass said Putin’s nuclear threats are aimed at getting the United States to think twice.

“He wants to hear more and more voices in the United States saying this game isn’t worth the candle, right? Is this really worth a nuclear exchange? And what he is obviously hoping is Americans decide not.”

Russia’s new wave of drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian cities this week killed dozens of people and knocked out power supplies across the country.

The Ukrainians are concerned that Russia’s new commander, Sergey Surovikin, infamous for his targeting of civilian targets in Syria, is likely to make the destruction of infrastructure a key part of his offensive.

While the nuclear threat remains up Putin’s sleeve, cracks have started to appear in Europe’s response, with French President Emmanuel Macron criticised from within the NATO alliance by stating that France would not respond with nuclear weapons if Russia used its own atomic arsenal against Ukraine or “the region”.

Macron told French TV the country’s nuclear doctrine rested on the “fundamental interests of the nation”, which “would not be directly affected if, for example, there was a ballistic nuclear attack on Ukraine, or in the region”.

It is rare for leaders of nuclear-armed countries to spell out explicitly when such weapons would be used because of the decades-old theory of deterrence through strategic ambiguity, and so as not to provide adversaries with a potential playbook for possible attacks.

“Part of our deterrence is also not to speculate publicly on what kind of response, in what kind of situation, they would get,” Kasja Ollongren, defence minister of the Netherlands, when asked about Macron’s statements, said.

“The president of France speaks for France and for himself. I think that our choice is . . . to condemn [Putin’s nuclear rhetoric], keep our calm and be prepared,” she added. “I would not comment on different possibilities and say ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”

Zelensky this week personally appealed to G7 nations to strengthen efforts to financially support the establishment of a missile defence shield for Ukraine amid shortages of armaments.

He has asked for American Patriot missiles, the US C-Ram (counter-rocket, artillery, mortar) system and Germany’s Iris-T to help defend itself. Advanced air defence systems are designed to protect entire cities from air attacks.

But NATO allies are struggling to secure sufficient air defence systems to meet Ukraine’s demands for additional support, western officials have admitted.

“It’s certainly not a question of lack of will,” US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday when asked at a press conference why allies were not sending air defence systems faster. “Countries will do whatever they can if they can to generate additional capabilities.”

Britain’s top spy Sir Jeremy Fleming, the head of British cyber intelligence unit GCHQ, said this week
that Putin’s forces were running out of weapons and ordinary Russians can now see that his invasion

He called the decision to invade Ukraine a “high-stakes strategy” where “the costs to Russia — in people and equipment — are staggering” and the “Russian population has started to understand that”.

While he said the circumstances made Putin more dangerous than ever, he was not yet convinced he was ready to use nuclear weapons.

Sir Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King’s College London, said while a month ago it was possible to imagine, even if unlikely, there could be some diplomatic means to bring the bloodshed, Putin had not boxed himself in after announcing the annexations.

“Ukraine’s only interest is total Russian withdrawal which Putin now says is constitutionally impossible,” he said. “Even those in the West most keen to push for negotiation around the current territorial holdings should appreciate that however difficult it is to get Russia to withdraw from Ukraine, they are not going to convince Ukraine to withdraw from Ukraine.”

He said until recently Putin could have hoped that the prospect of a long cold winter ahead would lead Europe to abandon its support for Ukraine, pushing it to end the war on Russian terms.

“This optimism has now evaporated, and it is impossible to pretend that all is well,” Freedman said.

“It has become very difficult to imagine a ‘face-saving’ deal as there is not much ‘face’ left to be saved. Humiliation has occurred.”

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.

Most Viewed in World

From our partners

Source: Read Full Article