Europe must invest more in Ukraine

OPINION:

Last month, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson encouraged Europe to send noncombat troops to Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected any European peacekeeping force in Ukraine, even after a ceasefire agreement.

“It’s about whether Ukraine is a free country or not,” Mr. Johnson said. “If it’s a vassal state of Russia, which is what Putin wants, then obviously it’s up to Putin to decide who comes to his country. If it’s not, then it’s up to the Ukrainians.”

Mr. Johnson is on target about Europe’s need to get more skin in the game, and it’s not just troops. Ukraine urgently requires more financial assistance, weapons and diplomatic support from its European allies.

Ukraine is in its fifth year of defending its independence and the continent from the Russian enemy at Europe’s gates. Failure to stop the Kremlin’s brazen and barbaric invasion of Ukraine would risk putting particularly Eastern European NATO member states — already in the crosshairs of Russian hybrid operations and airspace violations — in jeopardy of having to respond to a Russian military attack on their territory.

For the past year, Europe has generally sat on the sidelines while the Trump administration has conducted negotiations with Mr. Putin and his senior officials.

President Trump’s special envoy, Steven Witkoff, tried to deliver a peace deal by enticing the Kremlin with profitable commercial deals and an end to Russia’s diplomatic isolation, but Mr. Putin apparently will accept only Ukraine’s total capitulation and a Kremlin puppet regime in Kyiv.

If the past is prologue, then Mr. Putin will pause military operations only to regroup and complete his mission of conquering Ukraine if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy withdraws from the heavily fortified territory in the Donbas, which the Russian army has failed to conquer.

While giving the impression that he supports peace talks only to avoid incurring Mr. Trump’s wrath, Mr. Putin has continued to rain hell on Ukraine’s energy grid, infrastructure and civilian population.

Awakened from its post-Cold War slumber, Europe has provided Ukraine with more than $200 billion in financial, military, humanitarian and refugee assistance, including more than $70 billion in military assistance, ammunition, air defense systems, tanks and fighter jets.

Sweden and Finland became NATO members, thereby giving NATO a more robust presence to defend, deter and counter Russia in Europe and the Arctic. Senior defense officials from France, Poland, Germany, Italy and Britain met in Krakow last month to develop more efficient air defenses by launching the Low-Cost Effectors and Autonomous Platforms initiative.

Mr. Putin’s war of choice has resulted in more than 1 million Russian casualties. With a gross domestic product the size of Italy’s, Russia has clear limits on how long its unbalanced wartime economy can survive, even with support from the Kremlin’s axis of dictatorship allies, China, Iran and North Korea.

Europe should be able to take the lead in enabling Ukraine to win the war outright by forcing Mr. Putin to halt his invasion or negotiate an honorable peace that ensures Ukraine’s independence and protects Europe’s eastern flank.

First, Europe needs to treat Ukraine as an ally, with deeper commercial and military ties, including cutting-edge GPS and drone technology.

Europe also should double down on purchasing from the U.S. arsenal of democracy the air defense and long-range artillery to stop Mr. Putin’s army in its tracks.

Second, Europe needs to deal with internal dissent, particularly from Hungary and Slovakia. The majority of European nations should bypass these two outliers, which are blocking the financial and military support Ukraine so desperately needs.

Europeans should practice what they preach by diversifying away from imports of Russian hydrocarbons and committing to long-term purchases of liquefied natural gas from the U.S.

Third, Europe should, as Mr. Johnson rightly argued, deploy noncombat troops to Ukraine.

While coordinating and receiving strategic guidance from the Trump administration, Europe should assume primacy over future peace negotiations. If Mr. Putin threatens to walk away from his Potemkin village diplomacy, then Europe can wait him out.

“We are creating a stronger NATO than we’ve seen since the end of the Cold War,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb declared at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “Europe can defend itself.”

Having emphasized the importance of European NATO members spending as much as 5% of their GDP on defense and taking more responsibility for their national security, Mr. Trump should recognize the benefit to the U.S., Ukraine and NATO of Europe backing up Mr. Stubb’s words with decisive action.

• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018. He can be reached at danielhoffman@yahoo.com.