European leaders will mark the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine by reaffirming their political and financial backing for Kyiv, as a top EU official in Brussels played down the prospects for a peace deal in the near future.
Ukrainian cities continue to face sustained bombardment from Russian missiles and drones. Targeted attacks on critical energy infrastructure have left millions of civilians facing rolling blackouts without power and heating in sub-zero temperatures, while ceasefire negotiations stall.
The European Union’s representative on foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, on Monday said she was not optimistic that peace talks would yield any results “in the coming weeks and months”.
The senior EU official said Ukraine was being put under “a lot of pressure” to hand over territory to Russia in negotiations, while Moscow was not being challenged for making unrealistic demands.
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Speaking in Kyiv, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the country has defended its independence in the face of Russian aggression.
“Putin has not achieved his goals. He has not broken the Ukrainian people. He has not won this war. We have preserved Ukraine, and we will do everything to achieve peace. And to ensure justice,” Zelenskiy said, ahead of events to mark the anniversary in Ukraine.
Russian troops have made slow but steady gains in eastern Ukraine, often at a heavy cost, as the war enters its fifth year.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies last month estimated Russia has sustained close to 1.2 million casualties since its invasion in February 2022.
The Washington-based think tank estimated casualties on the Ukraine side were 500,000-600,000 troops. The centre said total casualties in the war could hit two million by this spring, at the current rate soldiers are being killed or injured.
After seizing large amounts of territory in eastern and southern Ukraine in the early months of the war, the advance of Russian forces slowed and the front line bedded down into what has become a long war of attrition, mainly fought by drones and missiles.
Despite pressure from US president Donald Trump to cut a quick peace deal, negotiators from Russia and Ukraine remain far apart on key details, such as the question of territorial concessions. Recent talks in Geneva between the two sides were described as difficult.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has accused Russian leader Vladimir Putin of dragging out negotiations without any real intention of agreeing a settlement, to end the deadliest conflict in Europe since the second World War.
Moscow has stuck to its maximalist demands, seeking control of the entire Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv is firmly opposed to handing over the remaining one-fifth of the Donetsk area in the east, which Russian troops have failed to take by force after years of fighting.
“I don’t look at it simply as land. I see it as abandonment, weakening our positions, abandoning hundreds of thousands of our people who live there,” Zelenskiy told the BBC in a recent interview.
The Ukrainian leader has said Putin will take advantage of any unequal truce that favours Russia to regroup his military forces and potentially launch a fresh attack in several years’ time.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa, the European Council president who chairs summits of EU leaders, will visit Kyiv on Tuesday in a show of support.
The pair had planned to announce fresh EU sanctions on Russia that would make it harder for Moscow to ship oil abroad to fund its war.
[ Orban spoils the show of united EU front as Ukraine war enters fifth yearOpens in new window ]
However, Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orban withheld his support for the new sanctions, which need to be signed off by all 27 EU governments. Orban also threatened to block a critical €90 billion EU loan, which Ukraine needs to avoid running short of funds by the middle of this year.
Orban said he will hold up EU support to Ukraine until Kyiv repairs a damaged pipeline that transits Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia. Poland’s foreign minister Radosław Sikorski yesterday said Orban’s attempts to “blackmail” Ukraine over oil deliveries was outrageous.
Separately, French president Emmanuel Macron and UK prime minister Keir Starmer are convening a virtual meeting of the “coalition of the willing”, the group of European and other – mostly western – countries formed to co-ordinate support for Ukraine, to discuss the conflict.
