Friedrich Merz, who is set to become Germany’s chancellor after his Christian Democratic Union party won the country’s Feb. 23 parliamentary elections, has said that Europe may have to establish an “independent” defense capability because the U.S. has become “largely indifferent” to Europe’s fate.
A top priority of any new European defense mechanism would be protecting Ukraine, now in its fourth year of trying to fight off the Russian invasion.
The country has survived thus far in large part because of a heavy flow of U.S. military aid provided by then-president Joe Biden. New President Donald Trump has said he wants to end the war and recoup Washington’s costs, going so far as to demand Ukraine give the U.S. access to the country’s mineral wealth in return for the tens of billions of dollars the U.S. has spent on Ukraine’s defense.
Voice of America’s Russian Service asked experts to assess the ability of European countries to help Ukraine to withstand, both militarily and economically, the Russian invasion, and to rebuild its destroyed infrastructure.
Andriy Zolotarev, director of the Third Sector Analytical Center, a Kyiv-based think tank, told VOA that U.S. military aid is uniquely important to Ukraine’s defense.
“In particular, the U.S. has huge stockpiles of weapons, they are a supplier of critically important intelligence information,” he said. “All the European countries taken together do not have satellite groupings like the United States. In addition, the U.S. has extremely important and truly irreplaceable types of weapons for Ukraine — Patriot [missile defense] systems, ATACMS [long-range guided missiles], HIMARS [multiple launch rocket systems], as well as spare parts for armored vehicles and artillery systems, and much more. This cannot be discounted in any way."
According to Zolotarev, while Europe produces advanced weapons and other military equipment, the European Union together with Great Britain can only partially compensate for what Ukraine would lose if the U.S. stopped providing assistance.
“Their efforts can soften the negative effect, but will not avoid unpleasant consequences,” he said. “This will simply delay the inevitable end. Europe is currently far from being in the best economic and military shape.”
Mark Feigin, a self-exiled Russian human rights activist and former lawyer, noted in an interview with VOA that while Europe includes two countries with nuclear arsenals, Great Britain and France, and is collectively far richer than Russia, the continent’s military potential is hampered by the fact that it is not “a single entity.”
“The strength of the United States is that it makes this or that decision in a centralized manner, which is then consistently implemented,” he said. “Europe's potential is dispersed ... In addition, the political situation in the EU countries is very volatile. ... All this keeps the Europeans from effectively using their obvious advantages [in the confrontation with Russia]."
Rebuilding Ukraine
Experts believe that Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction will ultimately be financed by private European investment. According to some estimates, that may carry a $500 billion to $2 trillion price tag. However, the longer the war continues, the more difficult the financing of Ukraine's reconstruction becomes. But the main question remains — who will pay for it?
"Well, ideally, it should be Russian money," said economist Alexey Bayer. "It should be either some reparations or some taxes, like on Russian exports, on the export of oil and gas and other minerals."
However, Bayer told VOA it is “unlikely” that any Russian government, “even a post-Putin one, will agree to voluntarily pay reparations to Ukraine.”
While Russian assets frozen in Western banks — including tens of billions of dollars in foreign currency and gold reserves held by Russia’s central bank — could be used to rebuild Ukraine, that would require their complete expropriation.
Many experts say neither the U.S. government nor European governments would take such a step, despite the heated discussion of this option in the press.
“It’s one thing to freeze assets; it’s another thing to confiscate assets,” said Alexander Cooley, a professor of political science at Barnard College.
“This is the legal struggle at the moment that’s happening in the U.S. and across EU and Western countries, and this is being constantly litigated, and it is uncertain territory. … I think you will find the Trump administration less favorable to seizing Russian assets, especially as it is moving to settle the conflict, and one of the primary Russian asks is the unfreezing of their assets and the removal of most of the sanctions,” he said.
Cliff Kupchan, chairperson of the Eurasia Group, a New York-based political risk consultancy, agreed that Europe is unlikely to support seizing frozen Russian assets.
“I think the Europeans are going to remain averse to the idea of breaking international norms on reserves and fear that Russia will then, as I think they would, seize Western governmental assets and Western private assets,” he said.
And while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and various Western officials and experts have called for a “Marshall Plan” to rebuild Ukraine — a reference to the massive U.S. aid program to rebuild Western Europe after World War II — Kupchan said a U.S. initiative on that scale for Ukraine’s reconstruction is unlikely.
“Right now, the U.S. is not only not interested, but it’s actively opposed to the idea. Trump thinks that Ukraine is yet another example of Europe free-riding on American money.”
Still, Kupchan said European investment for reconstruction eventually will flow into Ukraine, especially if there is a ceasefire that ultimately holds and there are Western peacekeeping forces to ensure it.
“I don’t think it will be that slow,” he said in reference to Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction. “As fast as it would be if there were a Marshall Plan? No. Stagnant? Also no.”
