(Oslo) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on his European and American allies on Wednesday in Oslo to continue their aid, at a time when new envelopes are blocked by dissensions both in Brussels and in Washington.
“Of course, we cannot win without help,” Zelensky said at a press conference after a meeting with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.
In the United States as well as within the European Union, the payment of tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine is currently hampered by internal divisions.
The military counter-offensive launched in June by the Ukrainian army having not brought the hoped-for results, Mr. Zelensky is seeking to remobilize his allies.
Arriving in Oslo early in the morning, he participated in a meeting of the leaders of the five Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland) on which he is counting to finance his project to produce NATO-type weapons on the territory Ukrainian.
“What Europe can do is do the same thing […] than what the Nordic countries are doing,” underlined Mr. Zelensky.
Since the start of the war in February 2022, the Nordic countries say they have devoted a total of around 11 billion euros to supporting Ukraine.
“Now is not the time to weaken,” said their five leaders in an open letter published in the Financial Times.
Norway, for example, agreed at the start of the year multi-year aid to Ukraine, civil and military, of 6.8 billion euros over the period 2023-2027.
On Wednesday, it announced the payment of just over 250 million euros as part of this package, including crucial new anti-aircraft weapons as the country continues to be bombed by Russia.
More than fifty people were injured in a nighttime missile attack on Kyiv on Wednesday.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, for her part, indicated that her government would present on Thursday a “new package” of military aid to Ukraine worth close to 1 billion euros.
Crucial summit
The opening of EU accession negotiations and the approval of European aid of 50 billion euros for Ukraine, in the form of donations and loans, will be on the menu of a European summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.
Hungarian nationalist Viktor Orban, the only EU leader to have maintained close ties with the Kremlin after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has threatened to block these key decisions for Ukraine, which he accuses in particular of corruption.
“I am ready to conclude financial agreements on financial issues,” he said in an interview published on Wednesday, but without specific reference to aid to Ukraine.
For him, however, the question of membership is not negotiable. Opening negotiations is “a terrible mistake”, he judges.
“I asked him to give me a reason, not three, five or ten, but one reason. I am still waiting for the answer,” commented Mr. Zelensky. “He has no reason to block Ukrainian membership in the EU.”
The Ukrainian president arrived in Oslo from the United States where he failed to convince Congress, divided on the issue, to approve a new envelope of 61 billion dollars for his country, simply saying he had received “positive” signals “.
Congress has committed more than $110 billion to provide military equipment to Ukraine and support it economically, but has so far failed to agree on the extension requested by the White House, to hold at least until the presidential election in November 2024 in the United States.
Democrats are in favor of this extension.
Apart from a handful of elected officials from the radical right, the Republicans are not totally opposed to it. But they tie their support to a major tightening of U.S. immigration policy.
For its part, the Kremlin estimated on Tuesday that any new American aid was doomed to a “fiasco”, while the Russian army claimed “significant” advances on part of the front.