Brussels, Paris At 10:26 a.m., a triple “Hurrah” resounds from thousands of soldiers across Red Square in Moscow. A brass band sings the Russian national anthem, and a salute is fired from the mighty cannons in front of the Kremlin wall. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin looks at the scenery with satisfaction, his world is still in order here.
However, the Victory Parade with which Russia celebrated the end of World War II on Monday, as it does every year, cannot hide the harsh reality. In the Ukraine war, the Russian army is currently conceding one defeat after the other.
The advance has stopped, countless tanks and planes have been shot down, thousands of soldiers and twelve generals have died. There is no reason for triumphant feelings.
Western observers had therefore eagerly awaited Putin’s appearance. Would the Kremlin ruler use the historically charged date to order mobilization and henceforth speak of a war instead of a “special military operation”? Or would he possibly declare victory, only to save face and initiate the Russian retreat?
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Nothing of the sort happened. In a 12-minute speech, Putin justified his war of aggression as “preventive resistance.” NATO’s military build-up in Ukraine threatened Russia, he said. “Preparations for another military operation in Donbass and an invasion of our historical territories, including Crimea, were openly underway,” he said. With the invasion, his country forestalled an attack.
With Russia playing the victim role, the head of state could easily make the connection to the Second World War. Russian soldiers fought in Donbass “on their own land, which the heroes of the Great Patriotic War defended to the death,” Putin said.
Expert warns of great hope
Some observers interpreted the fact that the president was only talking about the Donbass, not the whole of Ukraine, as a sign of a limitation of military goals. So does Thomas Kunze, Russia expert at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation: “With a lot of optimism, one could understand this speech to mean that Putin has realized that he cannot achieve his original war goals.”
The foreign policy expert Liana Fix from the Körber Foundation warned against too high hopes: “Putin has changed his tactics, the war goals remain the same,” she said. “We don’t see any error correction.” The Russian army wants to establish itself in the east of the country, but the entire Ukraine is still being shelled.
The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, did not want to leave the interpretation of history to Putin on this “Victory Day”. In a video message he compared the Russian troops to the Nazis. The occupiers will be expelled from Mariupol, Luhansk and the Crimea, just as the attackers were repulsed in the world war, he said. One of his advisers also rejected Putin’s claim that neither the NATO countries nor Ukraine wanted to attack Russia.
While Putin was celebrating his military in Moscow, the EU staged a contrasting program in Strasbourg, 2,500 kilometers away. At the end of the one-year citizens’ conference on the future of Europe, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola and the incumbent EU Council President Emmanuel Macron each gave a short speech on peace, progress and democracy.
The war in Ukraine has given the EU a new sense of mission. In Moscow, the autocrat Putin is parading his military, said von der Leyen. “That’s the only thing he has to offer his citizens.” In Strasbourg, on the other hand, a firework of ideas and free speech can be seen. “That’s the strength we have. Behind freedom lies an economic strength that we oppose to the military aggressor.”
Russia’s attempt to redraw Europe’s borders has reminded Europeans that the world is changing and we can’t stand still, said the Commission President. From this she derived the mandate for further European integration.
She also promised Ukraine that she would assess in June whether the country met the requirements to become a candidate for EU membership. Macron, on the other hand, dampened hopes of a quick accession. The truth is: Under the current rules, this process will “without a doubt take several decades”.
For Macron, the prerequisite for accepting new members is a fundamental reform of the EU. “We need to reform our treaties, that’s obvious,” said the French President. He advocated convening a treaty reform convention, which could start work as early as this summer.
The decision-making processes in the EU must become “more efficient”, he demanded. To this end, the majority principle must be introduced “in all key policy areas” so that individual states can no longer block decisions with a veto. In addition, democracy must be strengthened at European level.
The French President stressed the EU’s support for Ukraine.
(Photo: Reuters)
Macron said what the participants of the citizens’ conference wanted to hear. 800 randomly selected EU citizens had discussed the future of the EU with politicians over the past few months and developed 49 reform proposals.
The work on an oil embargo shows how difficult it is to reach unanimous decisions in the EU. At the weekend, the seven leading industrial nations (G7) announced that they would no longer purchase Russian oil. The USA, Canada and Great Britain have already decided this. France, Italy and Germany, on the other hand, have been arguing with the other EU countries for weeks about the exact exit conditions.
The EU ambassadors discussed the weekend without coming to a conclusion. According to the Bloomberg agency, European shipowners could still be allowed to transport Russian oil. Greece had insisted on this. The ban proposed by the EU Commission should help prevent Russia from selling its oil to other markets.
More Handelsblatt articles on sanctions against Russia:
The federal government is optimistic that an agreement will soon be reached. A spokesman for the Foreign Office said the negotiations had progressed. In Brussels, however, it is still unclear how the blocking states should be involved. And there will be even more. First it was only Hungary and Slovakia for which exemptions were to be created, then the Czech Republic was added and now Bulgaria as well.
Bulgaria will veto without exception, said Deputy Prime Minister Assen Vasilev. The Burgas refinery still needs time to expand its desulfurization in order to be able to switch entirely to non-Russian oil. However, Wassilew was optimistic that an agreement would be reached. The EU Commission’s draft stipulates that the EU countries will no longer import oil by the end of the year. A new compromise could be presented this Tuesday
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