The EU warned that the Russian offensive on the Donbas opens “a new phase” in the war

The threat of a major offensive on the Donbas, the region of the self-proclaimed independent republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, of which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned, opens “a new phase” in the conflict, “in the open field and with mass media”, as warned by the Union's High Representative for Foreign Policy European (EU), Josep Borrell.

With this offensive “we enter another new phase of the war (...) a war of positions, outside the city, in the open field, with mass media,” Borrell said, in a meeting with journalists in Madrid, about a new context that could force a rethink of Ukrainian defensive capacity.

In this vein, the EU remains ready to continue to provide financial support to finance arms for Ukraine.

During his visit to Kiev, the High Representative announced that the EU plans to allocate another 500 million euros from the European Peace Fund, a proposal still pending approval in the national parliaments of some Member States that would bring aid of great qualitative value to 1.5 billion euros - the first time that the EU uses funds to give arms to a country at war.

However, the military aid effort for Ukraine is not only being done by the EU, but much of it comes from the contributions that individual members of the community club, and especially those who feel most threatened by Russia, have spent, some more than 300 million euros, and others, a third of their military budget.

Borrell insisted, in any case, that the Twenty-Seven are not “driving the war”, nor “encouraging it to spread”, but “trying to contain it, both in its spatial dimension”, to prevent conflict from splashing on other countries, “and in its vertical dimension, so that more deadly weapons are not used,” stressed the high representative.

Along these lines, the Spanish politician argued that providing military support to the country is in line with the speech of community leaders that “Ukraine defends European values and is waging a war that defends us”. “To do something else would be hypocrisy,” he said.

The head of European diplomacy also highlighted the “great diplomatic effort” that the Twenty-Seven have made and continue to make with regard to war, and stressed that the European Union “cares how the conflict ends”.

An example of that diplomatic will was the visit, on Monday, by Austrian Federal Chancellor Karl Nehammer to Russian President Vladimir Putin, a meeting after which the Austrian was “pessimistic” because he saw Putin “immersed in a war logic”, he said at a press conference in Moscow after the meeting.

In any case, Borrell believes that the war “will always end with a negotiation”, but regretted that “for now, Putin does not want to stop it”.

(With information from EFE)

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