Show of solidarity in Kyiv after cracks emerge in western unity towards Ukraine

The EU foreign ministers’ long journey by plane and train to meet in the embattled Ukrainian capital Kyiv was, above all, symbolic.

It was a first: no such meeting had been held outside the EU before. As several of the ministers told journalists on arrival, it was intended to demonstrate solidarity, commitment to support Ukraine, and a united European front.

“We write history that almost all the ministers of the EU are meeting outside the EU in a war zone. This is a very strong political message to Ukraine,” was how Slovenia’s foreign affairs minister Tanja Fajon put it.

“This is a demonstration that there is absolutely no division in Europe,” Spain’s acting foreign minister José Manuel Albares Bueno told reporters.

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The truth was that these declarations were necessary because over the weekend, western unity on supporting Ukraine showed cracks.

An election in Ukraine’s neighbour Slovakia delivered the most votes to a Russian-leaning populist who campaigned on a platform of not sending a “single bullet” more to Kyiv, and who has blamed Ukraine for the invasion.

In the United States, a last-minute deal to avoid a federal shutdown was reached by cutting out aid to Ukraine, appeasing hardline Republicans.

It comes at a time when a dispute over agricultural goods has strained Ukraine’s relations with some neighbouring countries that were previously its staunchest allies, such as Poland. The two countries are now at loggerheads in a trade dispute, after Warsaw introduced restrictions on Ukrainian agricultural imports, on the basis that it needed to protect its farmers.

[ Ukraine plans trade complaint against three EU neighbours over grain import bans ]

These developments have illustrated that support for Ukraine is vulnerable to electoral politics.

It’s a concerning lesson for Kyiv that kicks off a year-long period of crucial elections.

Poland votes this month, as does Luxembourg, followed by the Netherlands in November. Next year sees the European Parliament elections take place across the continent. The contest is expected to deepen the hold of the hard right in parliament, Ukraine sceptics among them, and will determine the balance of power in the EU institutions.

Then will come the presidential election in the US. This carries the prospect of a return to power of long-time Vladimir Putin-admirer Donald Trump, determining whether Ukraine can continue to count on support from its most important military backer.

Within the EU, there are concerns that Slovakia’s election has delivered a new ally around the negotiating table for Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who has kept relations open with Russia and consistently sought to weaken EU sanctions.

The foreign ministers put a brave face on all this in Kyiv, reminding reporters that coalition negotiations in Slovakia still lie ahead to form a government.

Concretely, their discussions focused on how to lock down a predictable and reliable stream of support for Ukraine from the EU, both financial and military.

Several said they had been reassured by the Biden administration in the US that its support for Ukraine will remain steadfast.

But Lithuania’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, usually a straight talker, did not sound convinced.

“Many messages that have been sent from Brussels or Washington or elsewhere have the power to instil doubt whether we are serious,” he told reporters.

Abandoning Ukraine, he warned, would have far broader implications “It’s not just Russia that we have to worry about. You see other dictators, other authoritarian regimes that are watching very closely,” he said.

“Instabilities that we’re seeing in the western Balkans, in the south Caucasus, in the Sahel, I don’t think that they are individual events,” he continued. “The instabilities are connected. And if we don’t succeed, winning in Ukraine, we will see more of that.”