The bloc is committed to assisting Ukraine but doesn’t want to send its own citizens into battle, its foreign policy chief says
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has insisted that member states don’t want their citizens to die in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but that the bloc will keep supporting Kiev with military and financial aid.
Since the beginning of the conflict, the EU has provided Kiev with as much as €100 billion ($107 billion) in financial, military, humanitarian and refugee assistance. Brussels has also mulled the idea of tapping income generated by Russia’s frozen central bank reserves for Kiev, but no consensus within the EU or with allies has so far been reached on the issue.
“Europeans will not go to die for the Donbass, but we could avoid that Ukrainians have to die for the Donbass longer,” Borrell said on Sunday while speaking at a panel session of a two-day meeting of the World Economic Forum in Riyadh.
The bloc’s top diplomat admitted that the issue of allocating funds for Kiev is “difficult,” but stressed that Brussels pledged to help the nation in its war effort against Russia.
“Many people could say ‘well how long do we have to spend so much money’ but we committed to support Ukraine […] We have to continue supporting Ukraine and Ukrainians, enable [them] to resist,” he added.