The governments of the European Union, with the exception of the Hungarian, have no doubts about what they should do in the short term regarding the Russian war in Ukraine: financial and material support to kyiv,financing of its public accounts so that it does not go into default and delivery of increasingly modern and powerful weapons.

All supported by a long list of sanctions that are beginning to weigh on the Russian economy.

If in the short term there are no doubts, the divisions over how far that support should go and whether Ukraine should be pushed to sit down and negotiate. The line that emerges victorious from these divisions and debates will mark the European policy towards kyiv starting next year. The situation in Ukraine seems to prove those who call for a strong hand right.

After the first failed attacks to occupy kyiv and the occupation of the Donbas regions, there were massacres in small towns near kyiv and Kharkiv.

Now Moscow seems to focus on a civilian infrastructure destruction strategy, mainly energy, to try to bring the government of Volodimir Zelenski to its knees. International conventions dictate that such attacks are war crimes.

The kyiv government maintains the hard line despite the bombings. Oleksi Danilov, secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, rhetorically wondered Tuesday who wanted to “give security guarantees to a terrorist and murderous state.”

The missile launches randomly on cities, without military objectives and with long-range missiles, do not stop being “terrorist attacks” that seek to terrorize the population more than harm the Ukrainian Armed Forces, consider European diplomatic sources.

hard line

The governments of central Europe, those of countries closest geographically to Russia, follow the most intransigent line and closest to the Ukrainian government. They consider that there is nothing to negotiate with Putin until Russia leaves all the occupied territories in Ukraine (also the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014), pay war reparations and put war criminals on trial.

Other capitals, all on the western European side, such as Berlin, Rome or Madrid, believe that it is a position excessively hard.

They believe that they should always support Ukraine and that kyiv will decide whenever it wants what it is going to negotiate and what it is not. But they understand that, in the current state of the war, demanding the prosecution of President Vladimir Putin in an international tribunal for war crimes is unrealistic and that Ukraine will have to give something if it does not want a war that will last for years.

The only different line is maintained for now by Paris. So different from the European consensus and the official position of the European Union that it begins to bother. Last weekend, the French president released a diplomatic stone.

In a television interview, he said that after the war “security guarantees to Russia” should be given. Macron wondered: “Are we prepared to give Russia guarantees of its own security the day it goes to a negotiating table?” And he added: “One of the essential points is the fear (of Russia) of seeing NATO arrive at its doors, the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia.”

Criticism of Macron took very little time. Oleksi Danilov, secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council wondered on Twitter who might want to “provide security guarantees to a terrorist and murderous state”.

Macron’s statements also fell badly in Brussels because they seem to understand the justifications that the Russian president gave for launching the war.

Official European policy says that any country on the continent is free to decide for itself whether or not to join organizations like the European Union or NATO and that it is not up to Moscow to approve or veto that decision. Already last May Macron clashed with European diplomacy when he said that Putin should not be “humiliated”.

In Brussels, the European ‘chancellor’, the Spanish-Argentine Josep Borrell, wanted to put priorities in order. Borrell believes that the first thing is to “give security guarantees to Ukraine. We’ll talk about Russia.”

Brussels, special