HOW EU NATIONS FAILED UKRAINE
Ukraine is now clearly in a unfavourable position as U.S. - Russia ceasefire negotiations.
European nations have done a lot good moves to support brave Ukrainian defenders. But when it comes to the most important strategic decision, EU states failed in the following five areas which would make the Ukrainian position stronger:
1) after the Russian full invasion to Ukraine in early 2022, the richest European nations did not put large public funding commitments to defence spending. Poland did, few smaller Northern/Eastern European nations did. But Germany, France, Italy or Spain did not, so today in 2025, the superrich continent does not have large defense production capacities and capabilities which could sustain Ukrainian defences in key area. Europe chose not to get ready defense-wise even after the 2022 learget wake up call we had in generations.
2) EU countries decided not to put real hard sanctions on China to deter it or force it to stop the strategic Chinese support for Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Today, Russian aggression on this scale is happening mainly because of Chinese material, technological and financial backing. Europe has done only symbolic sanctions, China is laughing at us. For three key years Europe decided to do nothing real to stop China from making Russia the winner of war in Ukraine.
3) EU countries decided not confiscate 300 billion USD worth of Russian frozen assets to hand it to Ukrainian defenders. Why? Because EU nations are cowards who are just afraid of Chinese pressure on this issue, so Ukrainians are literally dying because there has not be enough of funding for Ukrainian defensive needs which EU countries should have provided by this strategically and morally right decision.
4) EU countries decided not send any troops to Ukraine, so Ukraine is facing the Russia-China-North Korea-Iran coalition alone. Ukraine is fighting for survival for three years alone, EU nations are until now even refusing to send their own military to non-combat roles to Ukraine. So there is no leverage for EU during the U.S.-Russia negotiations over the most important decision on European security infrastructure in three decades.
5) If EU countries wanted to force U.S. President not to throw Ukraine under the bus, EU countries had months to come up with huge financial offer to buy American weapons for Ukraine using EU funds. EU countries decided not to do it, just passively waiting for the U.S. President to do a deal without much of European role in this.
Brave Ukraine is pretty much standing alone because rich EU nations decided not to take these five strategic choices.