Europe still dithering over how to fund military aid for Ukraine

EU leaders fail to agree on plans to issue joint bonds even as Russia continues to boost its occupying forces

- Jonathan Eyal

European Union leaders have agreed to boost military assistance to Ukraine in the face of a sustained onslaught by Russian forces, even as United States lawmakers remain deadlocked on the passage of a new aid package for Kyiv.

However, the EU leaders failed to reach an agreement on a permanent and far more ambitious programme of financing the Ukrainian military just as Moscow announced plans to boost the size of its forces on Ukrainian territory.

"The leaders stressed that the EU and its member states should speed up and intensify the delivery of all the necessary military assistance... for Ukraine, which will enable the provision of one million rounds of artillery ammunition," reads a March 21 communique issued after a summit in Brussels.

Ukraine is facing an acute ammunition shortage, primarily caused by the failure of the US Congress to approve further funding for military assistance.

President Joe Biden's US$60 billion (S$81 billion) aid package has been held up in the House of Representatives for months by stiff opposition from Republican lawmakers, egged on by Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate in this year's presidential election.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan continues to claim that his administration will somehow get the military aid deal approved. "We are confident we will get this done. We will get this aid to Ukraine," he told a press conference in Kyiv on March 20, at the end of his latest visit to Ukraine.