They are​ calling fast-track Ukraine EU bid ‘nonsense.’ So why dangle it?

It’s supposed to soften the blow for lost NATO membership. But Kyiv is hardly ready and not all members are enthusiastic.

Ian Proud, Responsible Statecraft, Dec 18, 2025

Trying to accelerate Ukraine’s entry into the European Union makes sense as part of the U.S.-sponsored efforts to end the war with Russia. But there are two big obstacles to this happening by 2027: Ukraine isn’t ready, and Europe can’t afford it.

As part of ongoing talks to end the war in Ukraine, the Trump administration had advanced the idea that Ukraine be admitted into the European Union by 2027. On the surface, this appears a practical compromise, given Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s concession that Ukraine will drop its aspiration to join NATO.

However, the idea of accelerated entry for Ukraine has not been met with widespread enthusiasm in Europe itself. Diplomats in Brussels dismissed the notion as “nonsense: There needs to be an appetite for enlargement that isn’t there.”

There are two big problems with Ukraine’s rapid accession, the first being readiness and the second cost.

Firstly, Ukraine is nowhere near ready to meet the EU’s exacting requirements for membership. The process of joining the bloc is long and complex. At the start of November, in presenting its enlargement report, the EU said that it could admit new members as early as 2030, with Montenegro the most advanced in negotiations.

After it was formally granted candidate status in June 2022, Ukraine this year passed screening of its progress against the various chapters of the acquis (regulations) that it needs to pass before accession is granted. However, the EU enlargement report on Ukraine downgraded the country’s status from A+ to B, largely in light of the corruption scandal that first erupted in the summer and that rumbles on today.

The report indicated that Ukraine had made good progress on just 11 of the 33 chapters required for accession. It has made limited progress on 7 of the chapters, including on corruption, public procurement, company law and competition policy. It has yet to finalize negotiations on any of the chapters. And, of course, with war still raging, it is incredibly difficult to both agree and put in place the reforms needed to align itself with EU rules and standards. So, even if the war ended by Christmas, which despite the progress still appears optimistic, it would be unlikely to do all of the necessary work in the space of a year to be ready for accession.

The second, possibly more insurmountable challenge is cost.

In July, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz commented that Ukraine was unlikely to join before 2034. The EU has already formalized its next seven year budget through to that time, coming in at $2.35 trillion.

As I pointed out for Responsible Statecraft last year, Ukrainian membership of the EU would come with an enormous price tag……………………………………………. So the economic cost of delivering Ukrainian membership may not be politically viable any time soon, and certainly not before 2034, as the German premier has indicated.

……………………………………With practically all Russia-Ukraine economic ties severed over the past decade, Russian President Vladimir Putin has dropped his opposition to EU membership for Ukraine. An end to the war would allow Ukraine, finally, to start to reform and rebuild its bankrupt economy, and EU membership could accelerate that process.

That’s why Zelensky’s decision to drop the aspiration to NATO membership is such an important stepping stone. It has been abundantly clear since the start of the war that Russia’s NATO red line will never change. Russia has verbalized its opposition at least since Putin’s Munich Security Conference speech in 2007, when he said that NATO expansion “represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.” 

……………………………………..https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ukraine-european-union/

December 22, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Ukraine | Leave a comment

The Ukrainian negotiations are dragging on

on December 10, the unelected president, Volodymyr Zelensky, convened a videoconference with Scott Bessent, Jared Kushner (not as a negotiator in Moscow, but as a director of the Affinity Partners fund), and Larry Fink (a director of the BlackRock fund and already the owner of a large portion of the farmland) [ 6 ] . The purpose was clearly to assess what could be purchased in exchange for the rare earths. What was unthinkable ten months ago suddenly became possible.

Thierry Meyssan, voltairenet.org, Tue, 16 Dec 2025, https://www.sott.net/article/503525-The-Ukrainian-negotiations-are-dragging-on

Peace negotiations in Ukraine are hampered by the Zelensky administration’s resistance. The administration is attempting to buy time,first through legal means, then military action, and finally, political maneuvering. However, the contacts made suggest what this peace will look like.

Peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia are dragging on. Clearly, the Russian side, confident of victory, intends to liberate what remains of the Donbas as soon as possible, while the Ukrainian side refuses to concede anything.

Europeans from the EU and the UK are holding numerous meetings, almost one a day, with the sole obsession of continuing the war, with or without the United States.

Two new events have changed the game:Washington is considering leaving NATO and the Ukrainians are accepting the idea of ​​selling their country.

Washington and NATO

On December 1st, a secret videoconference was held with the participation of the French (Emmanuel Macron) and Finnish (Alexander Stubb) presidents, the German Chancellor (Friedrich Merz), the Polish (Donald Tusk), Italian (Giorgia Meloni), Danish (Mette Frederiksen) and Norwegian (Jonas Gahr Støre) prime ministers, the NATO Secretary General (Mark Rutte), the President of the European Commission (Ursula von der Leyen) and the President of the European Council (António Costa).

According to Der Spiegel, which obtained access to the meeting’s minutes, the NATO Secretary General stated that he agreed with the Finnish President and that Europeans should be wary of the peace agreement in Ukraine that President Donald Trump’s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, were negotiating [ 1 ] .

This is the first time a sitting NATO Secretary General has dared to openly criticize a sitting US President.

The National Security Strategy, published on December 4th by the White House, mentions NATO five times.However, it is no longer a crucial alliance for the United States, given that President Trump has signaled the end of the “American Empire.” Washington is too preoccupied with its $33 trillion debt to dedicate itself to the defense of Western Europe. The document therefore merely notes that the member states of the Atlantic Alliance will have to ensure their own security by allocating 5% of their gross domestic product (GDP) to it — a far cry from their current level of spending. It also notes that the alliance is not expected to expand further [ 2 ] .

On December 9, five days later, a Republican representative, Thomas Massie (Kentucky), introduced a bill (HR 6508) aimed at withdrawing the United States from NATO. This bill was sent to the Foreign Affairs Committee on December 12 [ 3 ] . This was the first time this issue would be addressed in Congress.

It is too early to conclude anything, but we must already note that there is a current opposed to the Atlantic alliance within the Trump supporters and that European states are awarethat they will not be able to ensure both their own national defense and attack the Russian Federation.

Privately, President Trump’s aides say he will withdraw from the alliance by mid-2027;a deadline that could be brought forward.

The leaders of the European Union are well aware of this.

December 19, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Europe is about to commit financial self-immolation: Its leaders know it

The people who will pay for this are not sitting in Commission buildings, they are the ones whose pensions, currencies, and living standards are being quietly offered up to preserve a collapsing illusion of power

Gerry Nolan, Ron Paul Institute for Political Economy, 15 Dec 2025, https://www.sott.net/article/503527-Europe-is-about-to-commit-financial-self-immolation-Its-leaders-know-it

Italy’s decision to stand with Belgium against the confiscation of Russian sovereign assets is not a diplomatic footnote. It is a moment of clarity breaking through the fog of performative morality that has engulfed Brussels.

Strip away the slogans and the truth is unavoidable: the seizure of Russian sovereign reserves will not change the course of the war in Ukraine by a single inch.

This is not about funding Ukraine, it is about whether sovereign property still exists in a Western financial system that has quietly replaced law with cult-like obedience.

That is why panic has entered the room.

The European Commission wants to pretend this is a clever workaround, a one-off, an emergency measure wrapped in legal contortions and moral posturing masquerading as hysteria. But finance does not function on intentions, rage, or narratives. It functions on precedent, trust, and enforceability. And once that trust is broken, it does not return.

The modern global financial system rests on a single, unglamorous principle, that State assets held in foreign jurisdictions are legally immune from political confiscation.

That principle underwrites reserve currencies, correspondent banking, sovereign debt markets, and cross-border investment. It is why central banks like Russia’s (once) accepted euros instead of bullion shipped under armed guard. It is why settlement systems like Euroclear exist at all.

Once that rule is broken, capital does not debate. It reprices risk instantly and it leaves.

Confiscation sends a message to every country outside the Western political orbit: your savings are safe only as long as you remain politically compliant.

That is not a rules-based order. It is a selectively enforced order whose rules change the moment compliance ends. What we have is a compliance cartel, enforcing law upward and punishment downward, depending on who obeys and who resists.

Belgium’s fear is not legalistic. It is actuarial. Hosting Euroclear means hosting systemic risk. If Russia or any future target successfully challenges the seizure, Belgium could be exposed to claims that dwarf the sums being discussed. Belgium is therefore right to be skeptical of Europe’s promise to underwrite such colossal risk, given the bloc’s now shattered credibility. No serious financial actor would treat such guarantees as reliable.

Italy’s hesitation is not ideological. It is mathematical. With one of Europe’s heaviest debt burdens, Rome understands what happens when markets begin questioning the neutrality of reserve currencies and custodians.

Neither country suddenly developed sympathy for Moscow. They simply did the arithmetic before the slogans.

Paris and London, meanwhile, thunder publicly while quietly insulating their own commercial banks’ exposure to Russian sovereign assets, exposure measured not in rhetoric, but in tens of billions. French financial institutions alone hold an estimated €15-20 billion, while UK-linked banks and custodial structures account for roughly £20-25 billion, much of it routed through London’s clearing and custody ecosystem rather than sitting on government balance sheets.

This hypocrisy and cowardice are not accidental. Paris and London sit at the heart of global custodial banking, derivatives clearing, and FX settlement, nodes embedded deep within the plumbing of global finance. Retaliatory seizures or accelerated capital flight would not be symbolic for them; they would be catastrophic.

So the burden is shifted outward. Smaller states are expected to absorb systemic risk while core financial centers preserve deniability, play a double game, and posture as virtuous.

This is anything but European solidarity. It is class defense at the international level.

The increasingly shrill insistence from the Eurocrats that the assets must be seized betrays something far more revealing than hysteria or resolve: the unmasking of a project sustained by delusion and Russophobic dogma, in which moral certainty did not arise from conviction, but functioned as a mechanism for managing cognitive dissonance, a means of avoiding realities that any serious strategy would already have been forced to confront.

December 19, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Ukraine | Leave a comment

The Moral Urgency of Compromise in Ukraine.

George Beebe, December 05, 2025

At the heart of the public debate over the latest twists and turns in the Trump administration’s ongoing discussions with Russian and Ukrainian negotiators is a fundamental moral question on which there is no consensus: Is it wrong to seek a compromise to end the war in Ukraine? To judge from the anguished reactions to the leak of the White House’s “28-point plan”—which was not really a plan so much as a rough snapshot in time of what US negotiators thought might bridge the gaps between Ukrainian and Russian demands—much of the Western commentariat believes the answer is yes.   

In fact, the foreign policy establishments in Europe and Washington—which until recent years had presided over the West’s post-Cold War foreign policies—appear to view compromise itself as anathema. They insist that Russia should not gain in any way from its invasion of Ukraine, arguing that any other outcome would reward aggression, which would not only tempt Russia to resume its military conquests at some future date, but also invite similar aggression by China and others. 

As a result, they argue, Ukraine should not withdraw from territory in Donetsk it now holds, even if that is reciprocated by Russian withdrawals outside the Donbass region, as Moscow has offered. 

Nor should Russian-occupied territory be recognized as Russian in any way. Moscow should have no say in how Ukraine treats its linguistic and religious minorities or over whether Ukraine joins NATO, hosts Western combat forces, or has caps on its military holdings. All of these, it is argued,  should be sovereign Ukrainian decisions, regardless of whether Russia drops its objections to Ukraine joining the European Union, as President Vladimir Putin has pledged. Moreover, Russia must pay war reparations, and its leaders must face trial for war crimes.  

……………………………….. There are three big problems with this uncompromising stance. First, there is a yawning gap between what the opponents of a compromise insist must happen in Ukraine and their willingness to undertake the risks and sacrifices necessary to make it so.  Neither the United States nor Europe has been willing to go to war with Russia to force its unconditional surrender, understanding that this would very likely end in nuclear conflict………………………..

Second, having ruled out both direct military intervention and compromise, Ukraine’s rejectionist benefactors assume that they can sustain a prolonged battlefield stalemate that will ultimately exhaust Russia’s resources or its patience. That assumption is wishful thinking at best. Ukraine’s military efforts suffer from two increasingly problematic shortages: manpower and air defenses. The West cannot remedy Ukraine’s recruitment and desertion problems without sending hundreds of thousands of its own forces to fight. 

It cannot plug Ukraine’s growing air defense gap because Russia is building attack missiles, drones, and glide bombs faster than Western factories can manufacture air defense systems. This is not a formula for a prolonged stalemate; it is a recipe for Ukraine’s collapse, probably within months rather than years. 

Third and most important: The principle that lies at the root of the Ukraine conflict, which the opponents of compromise claim to defend—the principle that every nation has a sovereign right to choose its military allies—was never intended to be absolute, and the United States historically has not treated it as sacrosanct.

……………………………………………… That [the Cuban missile]crisis was resolved through a compromise in which the Soviets agreed to remove their missiles from Cuba in return for America’s pledge to remove its own missiles from Turkey and to refrain from efforts to overthrow the Castro regime.

……………………………….A truly principled approach to ending the war in Ukraine cannot be uncompromising.  It has to find a reasonable balance between principles that are by their very nature in tension with one another, such as Ukraine’s freedom to choose its allies and Moscow’s insistence that this freedom be limited by Russia’s security concerns………………………………………….. https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-moral-urgency-of-compromise-in-ukraine/

December 12, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Ukraine | Leave a comment