But Zelensky knows he needs to make this stick, or else Europe’s most powerful country could easily sink back into reticence, complacency, and self-interest.
“There will be a new reality. It will be a new Europe, after the invasion we saw today,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on February 24, the day Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troops attacked Ukraine.But even with this fair European wind, Zelensky is in a race against time. If this is a long conflict, or a complicated peace, fissures will reopen and Putin will exploit them.
Yet in the 14 years before that “tomorrow” came to Ukraine, little action was taken against Putin. Even his 2014 annexation of Crimea was treated as a violation of law and principle, not as an existential or strategic threat.The invasion of Ukraine has the look and feel of a tipping point, belatedly reached. But the question is whether, in Europe, the scales stay tipped.
“Germany has announced its determination to absorb the significance of the crisis in Ukraine … [but] it remains to be seen whether the rhetoric will be followed by action for the long run,” writes Shimon Stein, a former Israeli ambassador to Germany.on Russian energy. The EU gets as much as 40 per cent of its gas and 25 per cent of its oil, along with almost half its coal, from Russia. Gas and coal imports are higher than they were following Crimea’s annexation.
After spending billions of euros on protecting citizens from the pandemic’s economic fallout, European governments will have to spend more to prevent crippling energy bills hitting the lowest-income households. The debate might divide not only voters within countries, but between countries, as their reliance on Russian gas varies from 100 per cent to the single digits.
“While EU citizens have been eager to help their fellow Europeans, the 2015-16 crisis shows that the mood can change quickly. European migration politics have been toxic for many years, and Putin and his minions are not shy of exploiting that.”Even if the conflict ends more quickly, the dilemmas pile up.