Proposal for EU to provide 5B euro a year over next four years for Ukraine’s defence needs

It is proposed that the European Union creates a dedicated section under the European Peace Facility to provide up to five billion euro a year over the next four years for the defence needs of Ukraine, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said after a meeting of EU foreign ministers.

“It is still the same tool – the European Peace Facility – which has been working very well and we will continue using it, but with a dedicated chapter inside it, with a specific funding which can be estimated on the figure I mentioned: five billion euro a year for the next four years,” Borrell said.

“This is the evaluation of the needs and the cost of our long-term security commitment to Ukraine,” he said.

The issue would be debated in detail at the end of August at an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Toledo, Spain, Borrell said.

He said that the EU foreign ministers had also reaffirmed support for Ukraine’s Peace Formula.

“We consider it as the only comprehensive basis to achieve a just and sustainable peace. And on that, Ukraine should be in the driver’s seat.  In the end, it is the Ukrainians who are suffering the direct consequences of this war. It is Ukraine which is being invaded.”

At the meeting, the EU foreign ministers were briefed by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

“We reconfirmed our [resolve] to continue supporting the legitimate defence of Ukraine against the aggressor, who keeps committing atrocities against the Ukrainian people, targeting these last three nights Ukrainian ports and grain storages, which affects also the most vulnerable people around the world,” Borrell said.

“You know that Russia withdrew from the Black Sea Grain Deal, and the world faces again a man-made problem of food security.  Putin is using hunger as a weapon – even against people in countries that still hesitate to condemn his illegal bloodshed in Ukraine,” he said.

“Let’s recall the basics: Russia – without any justification – is blocking and bombing Ukrainian seaports and preventing freedom of navigation in the Black Sea, [now also] threatening all ships navigating in the Black Sea to be considered as ‘warships’”

He said that Russia was illegally blocking exports of Ukrainian grain, destroying Ukrainian fields and looting Ukrainian agricultural production.

Contrary to what Russia is claiming, it was making good profits from exports of its grain and fertilisers, and would make even more profits now when the prices will rise again after Russia killed the Black Sea Grain Deal, and was destroying the stockpiles in the Ukrainian harbours. 

“We believe that the international community should respond decisively to this deliberate attempt by Putin to starve the world populations, in order to gain extra money or to fight this illegal war,” Borrell said.

The Council of the EU said in a July 20 statement that the EU had imposed restrictive measures against 12 other individuals and five entities responsible for serious human rights violations in Russia.

The measures target those who have misused facial recognition technology for massive arbitrary arrests in Russia as well as the politically motivated rulings against the opposition politicians, democracy activists and outspoken Kremlin critics Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza.

These listings include various bodies linked to the City of Moscow, a minister in the government of the city and a deputy mayor, three companies producing or organising tenders for the supply of facial recognition systems.

The listings also target individuals responsible for running the penal colony where Navalny has been held since his politically motivated sentencing in March 2022 and an officer of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) personally involved in an attempt to assassinate Kara-Murza through the use of a neurotoxin.

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