Josep Borrell claims the bloc’s armies would “run out of ammo in two weeks” if confronted with a conflict such as in Ukraine. The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell warns that European armies would not have enough resources to engage in war.
The European Union is not prepared for a war such as the one in Ukraine, the bloc’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell warned on Wednesday. He made the claim at a debate panel hosted by the Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS) think tank.
The top diplomat stated that he doesn’t believe it “realistic” that European nations could substantially improve their military capabilities in a timely manner, since the process is “voluntaristic” and there is no “law of gravity to make things happen.”
He explained that even though it is well known where the EU defense shortcomings are, there has to be a “wake-up call” for members to act in a coordinated manner and not end up wasting money. However, he expressed his dismay that the war in Ukraine was apparently not “the right wake up call.”
“We should learn from this war. Look, the European armies couldn’t maintain a war like the one in Ukraine for more than two weeks. They’ll run out of ammunition,” Borrel said.
He also pointed to the fact that Europeans had grown too accustomed to peace and refused to acknowledge the threat looming from abroad. He stated that the EU was built with the banner of peace and that war had “disappeared from our collective imagination,” after the founders of the bloc set out to make war “mentally impossible.”
However, the diplomat noted that peace was “no longer an engine, no longer something that moves. Yes, peace, okay, what else?”
“Don’t believe that peace is the natural state of things. The natural state of things is war and we in Europe, we have been accustomed to believe that peace is the normal state and I hope that we are not going to learn that this is not the case,” he said.
Borrell went on to compare Europeans to “big birds that put their head inside the sand” and don’t want to understand how dangerous the world is, insisting that it is important to make them understand “how the world is.”
Borrell previously called for an enhancement of European defense capabilities and for shortfalls revealed by the conflict between Russia and Ukraine to be overcome. He wrote in his blog on Sunday that the most obvious examples of such gaps were the “depleted stockpiles resulting from the military support we provided to Ukraine,” as well as issues “inherited from past budget cuts and underinvestments.”
“The EU needs to take on more responsibility for its own security,” which would require creating “modern and interoperable European armed forces, looking at the higher-end of the spectrum and also striving to scale up capabilities and forces,” he pointed out.
The diplomat underscored three main lines of action that should eventually allow the bloc to eradicate the current deficiencies in its defense: working on combat readiness, stockpile replenishment and modernization of its capabilities.
“The time to push forward European defense is now. We need to strengthen the European defense industrial base and to be operational with the needed military capacities. To be able to increase our military capacity to defend ourselves, to make NATO stronger and to support better our partners whenever needed,” he insisted.
Meanwhile, Moscow has decried the EU’s increasing militarization and has argued that the bloc is becoming an “aggressive militant player that has ambitions stretching far beyond the European continent” and is “following in the footsteps of NATO.”, RT reports.
Kiev’s Ambassador Andrey Melnik insults hosts Germany again and is apparently angry at the pace of arms deliveries from Berlin. Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Andrey Melnik, posted an image on Thursday implying that German weapons are being sent to Ukraine at a snail’s pace. Melnik has a long record of insulting his host nation.
Melnik posted an image of a snail with a bullet taped to its shell on his official Twitter account, along with the text “German weapons for Ukraine already on their way.” Claiming to have been sent the picture by a member of the government in Kiev, he added a dismissive “Pff. Russia must not win the war.”
“Deutsche Waffen für die Ukraine bereits unterwegs” 🤦♂️
— Andrii Melnyk (@MelnykAndrij) May 25, 2022
Gerade von einem Regierungsmitglied aus Kyjiw per whatsapp zugeschickt bekommen. Tja. Russland darf den Krieg nicht gewinnen pic.twitter.com/giDldA20tv
Melnik’s post came a week after the German Defense Ministry announced it would deliver 15 1960s-era Gepard anti-aircraft vehicles to Ukraine in July, along with 59,000 rounds of ammunition and training for their operators. In April, Berlin authorized their manufacturer, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, to deliver up to 50 units to Ukraine at the German government’s expense.
Berlin has also sent shoulder-fired anti-tank rockets and reportedly delivered seven self-propelled howitzers to Ukraine, but an earlier deal that would have seen 50 or more Leopard 1 tanks donated to Kiev fell through, reportedly due to a lack of ammunition and spare parts for the Cold War-era vehicles.
Melnik welcomed the delivery of the Gepard vehicles, but accused Germany of failing to display “imagination and courage” by sending more heavy weapons. In an interview with German tabloid Bild earlier this month, the ambassador asked for 88 Leopard tanks, 100 Marder tanks and more self-propelled howitzers, while he also called on Berlin to pass a lend-lease law to allow for an unlimited supply of arms and ammunition to Ukraine.
With Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz insisting that his country should strive to “avoid a direct military confrontation” with Russia, Melnik told Bild that he thinks the German government “is very good at justifying and giving absurd excuses for its inaction.”
Melnik has veered into even more undiplomatic language too. After Kiev told German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in April that he was “not wanted” in the city due to his past warm relations with Moscow, Scholz called it “unacceptable to tell the president of a country that provides so much military assistance, so much financial assistance…that he can’t come.”
Rather than defuse the tension, Melnik declared that Scholz was acting like an “offended liverwurst.” While the chancellor said that he would not “overreact” to the remark, a number of German MPs complained, with Left Party deputy leader Sevim Dagdelen demanding the expulsion of Melnik. Dagdelen called the ambassador a “Nazi sympathizer” over his pilgrimage to the grave of Ukrainian war criminal and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.
Melnik has also ridiculed the chief of Volkswagen for urging Ukraine and Russia to pursue a negotiated peace deal, called Germany’s reliance on Russian energy imports “shameful,” and describing an invitation to a concert at Steinmeier’s residence in March as “an affront” due to the fact that Russian musicians were set to perform.
Russia attacked the neighboring state in late February, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.
The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force, RT reports.