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As winter looms in Europe, concerns are growing that the continent’s unwavering support for Ukraine might come at too high a price.
The European Union has so far maintained its steadfast policy of opposition to Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine with a series of biting sanctions on Russia. But the Kremlin has fought back using its most valuable export: energy. Prior to the war, the 27 EU nations relied on Russia for 40% of their natural gas and 29% of their crude oil, supplies which have largely dried up in the past few months, especially natural gas.
The energy crunch has sparked a crisis on the continent, with electricity prices rising to 10 times their decade-long average. But at the moment, even that doesn’t look like it will be enough for European officials to abandon support for Ukraine. The stakes are just too high.
“This is an existential battle for us,” Stavros Lambrinidis, the EU’s ambassador to the U.S., said in an interview with Bloomberg this week. “If [Putin] succeeds, we will have a tremendous amount of difficulty as Americans and Europeans to project our power around the world for decades to come.”
Support in the face of a crisis
The energy crisis has pushed European governments to fill their natural gas reserves to record levels in preparation for winter, when energy demand tends to peak, but it is also forcing officials to plan far ahead.
High energy prices, mild temperatures so far, and nearly full natural gas reserves have helped European nations avoid strict energy rationing measures. A severe energy crisis this winter may yet be avoided, but scarce global supply of natural gas and oil is likely to bleed into next year too, which experts say might be even more difficult for Europe.
Lambrinidis said that Europe has enough gas stocked up to make it through the winter, even if the last Russian gas flows were cut off today. But electricity bills are still high, he added, forcing European officials to plan for more natural gas deals with providers including the U.S. and Norway up to 2024.
The energy crisis, Lambrinidis said, has largely been of Europe’s own making after becoming over-reliant on Russian energy, echoing a similar statement made last month by the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who said that the EU had allowed Russia—along with China—to become the “basis of our prosperity” for far too long.
But Lambrinidis also said that the war has jolted Europe to its senses over the dangers of becoming too entangled with a leader of Putin’s ilk, and that supporting Ukraine has become a duty as part of the effort to contain the Russian leader.
“The support and commitment we are showing to Ukraine is not in spite of the pain that this war is causing in Europe. It is largely because of it,” Lambrinidis said.
“We understand because of this war that we cannot be reliant in the future on people like Putin or anyone else like that,” he added.
‘No safe distance’
Lambrinidis is not the first leader to characterize the war in Ukraine as a larger conflict surrounding the future of Europe and Western democracy.
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson argued at last summer’s G7 meeting that the financial cost of supporting Ukraine was a “price worth paying for democracy and freedom.” In her annual state of the union address in September, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described the war as being “about autocracy against democracy.” And in a speech in March, shortly after the onset of the war, U.S. President Joe Biden portrayed the conflict as a “great battle for freedom” against “autocrat” Vladimir Putin.
But the war may represent much more than a simple fight to uphold democratic values, as it could also determine the geopolitical order of the future, according to Lambrinidis.
“[Putin] is not just simply trying to wipe Ukraine off the map,” he said. “He is the junior partner of China, and if he succeeds we will have to deal with much higher costs—Americans and Europeans—of a victorious Russia and an emboldened China.”
China has largely remained neutral since the conflict broke out, maintaining its own strategic and ideological relationship with Russia while also avoiding making an enemy out of the West.
EU leaders recently affirmed their support for Ukraine, with plans being drawn up for a further €1.5 million a month in financial aid starting from next year, but discussions have been complicated by disagreements on a continent-wide energy cap and public unrest over high electricity prices.
But despite the rising costs of the energy crisis, Lambrinidis emphasized that democracy is on the line in Ukraine, and urged leaders in both Europe and the U.S. not to soften their support for the country.
“There’s no safe distance when an autocrat sitting on nuclear weapons is just pushing to make sure he can bend the will of democracies to his own,” he said.
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