The Coalition of the Willing has achieved nothing

Time to be more direct in telling Zelensky what he should do

The war in Ukraine happened because western nations insisted that Ukraine be allowed to join NATO but were never willing to fight to guarantee that right.

That reality has never changed. Last week’s latest Summit of the Coalition of the Willing confirmed that it will not change any time soon.

The only countries that appear remotely willing to deploy troops to Ukraine in a vague and most certainly limited way are the British and French.

Both would need parliamentary approval which can’t be guaranteed. Reform Leader Nigel Farage has already come out to say that he wouldn’t back a vote to deploy British troops to Ukraine because we simply don’t have enough men or equipment, a point recently reinforced by General (ret’d) Sir Richard Shirreff.

Even though Keir Starmer has the parliamentary numbers to pass any future vote on deploying British troops, it would almost certainly damage his already catastrophic polling numbers.

Macron is clinging on to his political life and would probably face a tougher tussle to get his parliament to approve the French sending their troops to Ukraine, potentially leaving the UK on its own.

In any case, it is completely obvious that Russia won’t agree to any deployment in Ukraine by NATO troops. This shows once again that western leaders have learned absolutely nothing over the past decade. It will never be possible to insist that Russia sues for peace under terms which is has long made clear are unacceptable at a time when it was winning on the battlefield, and European nations refuse to fight with their own troops.

Hawkish British journalist Edward Lucas, with whom I disagree on most things, summed it up well in an opinion in the Times Newspaper when he said

We are promising forces we do not have, to enforce a ceasefire that does not exist, under a plan that has yet to be drawn up, endorsed by a superpower (read the US) that is no longer our ally, to deter an adversary that has far greater willpower than we do.’

President Putin has shown an absolute determination not to back down until his core aims, namely to prevent NATO expansion, are achieved. And as I have said many times, the west can’t win a war by committee.

All of these pointless Coalition of the Willing meetings happen in circumstances where Europe refuses to talk to Russia upon whom an end to the war depends. Peace will only break out after Ukraine and Russia sign a deal, and the west appears deliberately to be doing everything possible to ensure that Russia never signs.

Instead, we entertain Zelensky with hugs and handshakes, reassuring him that we will do anything he wants for as long as he needs, only to offer insufficient help all of the time.

And, as Zelensky is in any case unelected, not likely to win elections in Ukraine as and when they happen, overseeing a corrupt regime that is adopting increasingly repressive tactics to keep a losing war going, it is not in his interest to end the war anyway.

His calculus continues to be that, if he clings on for long enough, the west will finally be dragged into a direct war with Russia. So, he’s happy to drag out an endless cycle of death by committee in which European leaders never agree to give him exactly what he wants and he uses that as a pretext not to settle.

Zelensky went on from Paris to Cyprus where, among other things, he has been pushing for more sanctions against Russia. At no point since 2014 have sanctions looked remotely likely to work against Russia, for reasons I have outlined many times.

The European Commission is now planning its twentieth round of sanctions to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the war on 24 February 2026. So with peace talks ongoing, Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas as always are doing their bit to ensure that nothing gets agreed.

None of this brings the war any closer to an end nor does it provide any security guarantees to Ukraine. As always, the biggest security guarantee should be the offer by European allies to intervene militarily in Ukraine should Russia decide to reinvade after any future peace deal.

But that was not agreed in Paris. Instead, the Paris Declaration said, ‘we agreed to finalise binding commitments setting out our approach to support Ukraine in the case of a future armed attack by Russia. These may include, military capabilities, intelligence and so on.’

In diplomatic parlance, agreeing to finalise commitments that may include basically means that nothing has been agreed.

The declaration also said:

We stand ready to commit to a system of politically and legally binding guarantees. However, the final communique gave individual countries opt outs from those guarantees by saying that any guarantees would be, ‘in accordance with our respective legal and constitutional arrangements’.

So, again, in diplomatic parlance, what this means is that some coalition members may be able to opt out of the security guarantees if they decide that their domestic framework does not allow for such an arrangement, thinking here in particular of Hungary, Italy and Spain, for example.

What the declaration does achieve is to commit European nations to paying Ukraine to maintain an army of 800,000 personnel after the war ends which, by the way, is significantly higher than the total number of armed forces personnel of Germany, France and Britain combined.

Even though these are Ukrainian troops, not European, Russia will undoubtedly see EU funding of a large Ukrainian army on its border as a form of NATO lite. Which, of course, Zelensky would welcome.

So the process of holding near weekly Coalition of the Willing summits is entirely pointless, though perhaps that is the point. Since 2022, western leaders have been completely unable to say no to Zelensky, either through guilt or stupidity, or both.

Yet at some point, if only for their own political survival, Starmer and others will have to politely decline to offer more support and make it clear to Zelensky that he has no choice but to sue for peace. To me, at least, the European offer to Zelensky follows these lines:

Ukraine cannot join NATO (sorry we lied to you about that) but you can join the European Union and we will help you make the reforms you need to do so.

You will get significant investment when the war ends that boosts your economy. As your people return home, we believe Ukraine has potential to grow quickly and reconstruct.

However, it may still be many years before you receive EU subsidies on the level of other European Members, and you possibly may not receive them at all.

And you will have to become financially sustainable, including meeting the EU’s fiscal deficit like other EU member states.

I’m afraid that means that you won’t be able to maintain an army of 800,000 people at Europe’s expense (sorry we reassured you that you could).

But, as a European Union member you would have a security guarantee by virtue of your membership of this community, even though only Macron’s France has said it would send you troops (je m’excuse).

You should also be aware that Europe sees benefit in a normalised economic relationship with Russia, that includes purchasing cheap Russian energy. We can’t go on buying massively expensive US LNG just to avoid hurting your feelings.

Sanctions may have been a policy or war, but they won’t be a policy of peace, and you will need to accept that we will drop them too.

We have now reached the limit of the financial support that we can provide to you so we have reached the point of now or never in your signing a peace deal.

That requires you to make hard choices about de facto recognition of land on the lines of the peace deal that the US is trying right now to finalise with Russia.

Without that, he will simply continue this charade of endless pointless Summits and the war will drag Europe even further into the mire.

That’s a lot to take in and we’ve already apologised enough as it is. Look, we lied to you okay, but everyone makes mistakes.

Somehow, though, I predict the Europeans will continue to drift in circles. I wonder where the next Coalition of the Willing Summit will be? I hope it’s soon, as Zelensky might actually have to spend some time inside of Ukraine if there’s a delay. And he likes it in Europe as it’s the only place where everyone seems to love him

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