Donald Trump on 3 March paused military aid and intelligence sharing with Kyiv, dealing a catastrophic blow to Ukraine’s front line.
Trump’s public animosity towards Ukraine and Zelensky – culminating in a bust up with the Ukrainian President in the Oval Office – and his seeming willingness to side with Vladimir Putin has led many European leaders to make a fundamental reassessment of the realistic support required by the war-torn ally.
The US has been the main provider of intelligence for Ukraine throughout the conflict, supplying signals intelligence, satellite imagery and targeting data used to hit Russian positions.
Rod Thornton, a Russian military expert at King’s College London, said “simply the Europeans can’t step up to match the ability of the Americans to provide intelligence.”
Keir Starmer hosted a summit of 19 nations to discuss peace in Ukraine over the weekend (Photo: Justin Tallis/AFP)“The Americans were previously using intelligence means to provide warning to the Ukrainians that stuff was on the way and then they could then take defensive manoeuvres,” Thornton told The i Paper. Europe does not have the access to the same quality of intelligence that would replace the gap left by the US, he added.
“But the Americans have lots and lots of satellites,” which Nato has “always been reliant” on the US providing, Thornton explained.
Russian on Thursday launched large-scale missile and drone bombardment on Ukraine‘s energy infrastructure, wounding 10 people, including a child, and disrupting critical heating and water supplies.
Military aid
While some experts believe Ukraine will have enough munitions stockpiles to last a few months, losing billions of dollars in American-made weapons will likely mean it is only a matter of time before Kyiv’s forces start to buckle.
While simultaneously plugging the hole in US intelligence, European leaders will have to rapidly make up the shortfall in artillery, missiles and air-defence systems to offer Ukraine any chance of defence.
A Ukrainian soldier armed with a machine gun on a Challenger-2 tank in Ukraine (Photo: Serhii Mykhalchuk/Global Images Ukraine/Getty)
The fund would prioritise supply of air defence, missiles and drones as part of a wider package of proposals that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said could mobilise up to 800bn euros (£671bn) for European defence.
Dr Matthew Ford, a war studies expert from the Swedish Defence University, said the EU’s proposed funding was for “Ukraine to fight on and also to rebuild European stocks having given away so much European equipment to Ukraine already”.
He said: “The net result of that is presently Europe cannot fill the shortfall in shell usage that the Ukrainians are firing at the Russians every year.”
“What you’re looking at is Europe having to come up with additional shells – and that’s before they rebuild their own stocks,” Ford said. “Without that restocking you’d have weakened conventional deterrence needed to deter Russia from invading the Baltic.”
As US Defense Department fact sheet from January this year, stated that from 2023 to 2024, Ukraine increased its total domestic production of mortar and artillery ammunition—ranging from 60mm to 155mm calibers—from 1 million rounds to 2.5 million rounds annually (150 per cent increase).
Trump has suggested that he is not interested in providing a security guarantee in the form of US troops on the ground. He insisted the presence of American companies exploiting Ukraine’s rare-earth minerals will be enough to keep Russia at bay. It will likely fall to Europe to provide such a backstop.
While it is unlikely that any peace deal would involve any serious number of European troops in Ukraine due to Russia’s insistence, such a military would still be a formidable force in theory.
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky at their ill-fated meeting in the White House last week (Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)“The question is whether European troops are going to be sufficient and the right sort to be able to step into Ukraine and do some kind of task but effectively create some form of tripwire should the Russians choose to attack.
Former national security adviser and cabinet secretary Lord Mark Sedwill said if boots are put on the ground, it could be a commitment of “many years”, warning that the UK would “have to be willing to display strategic patience”.
“So we have to be willing to sustain such an effort for potentially quite a long period,” he said. “Could be many years”.
US leaving Nato not the ‘end of the world’?
During his first term, the US President talked about the prospect of abandoning the collective defence agreement altogether before recently casting doubt yet again whether he would defend Nato allies “if they don’t pay”.
square NEWS British peacekeepers could be in Ukraine for decades, ex-Nato chief warns
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“I think we are already witnessing a new era, an era where we cannot take for granted US security guarantees,” Wallace told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Wallace continued: “That isn’t the end of the world if they pull out of Nato. Of course, it’s horrific. But we have the will in Europe and the money to fix our own security and defence.”
It comes after Trump on Friday said he was finding it “easier” to deal with Russia than Ukraine, ahead of negotiations with Kyiv in Saudi Arabia next week. He also said Putin was “doing what anybody else would do” by intensifying missile barrages against Ukraine.
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