EU election results loom over Ukraine aid discussions

ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT ABOVE THE ATLANTIC OCEAN — As defense chiefs gather in Brussels this week to talk about sending more weapons to Ukraine, U.S. and European officials are growing worried that the far-right surge in the European Parliament election last weekend foreshadows increasing Western fatigue with the war.

U.S. officials maintain that the vote, which saw gains by far-right parties in Germany and France that are skeptical of continuing aid for Ukraine, won’t immediately be felt in Kyiv. Yet former officials who speak to members of the current administration say the results could be a harbinger of brewing resistance to the war effort.

And combined with fears about the potential return of former President Donald Trump to the White House and his comments on allowing Russia to bomb alliance members, the European election results lend new urgency to efforts to shore up support for Kyiv before November’s U.S. presidential vote, they say.

“There starts to become this far-right momentum that starts growing, and it seeds and it supercharges other far-right forces,” said Heather Conley, a former deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, noting that the question of the outcome of the U.S. elections is in the backdrop of every conversation with allies.

“You can feel this urgency of, ‘let’s get this locked down in the next six months,’” she added, based on her conversations with people still in the administration and European officials.

A senior Defense Department official stressed that Western countries supporting Ukraine have felt that sense of urgency since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and that the multinational effort to arm Ukraine is driven more by the situation on the battlefield than the 2024 election cycle. The groundwork for current moves to support Kyiv — for instance preparing a path for Ukraine to join NATO and training Ukrainian forces — were laid in the summer of 2022, the senior DOD official said.

“Yes, there’s urgency, but no, it’s not driven by the political cycle. It’s driven by the recognition that Russia is determined to try to limit Ukraine’s options,” said the senior DOD official, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking.

The official made remarks to reporters while traveling with Austin to Brussels on Wednesday.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is traveling to Brussels this week for a meeting of the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a gathering of Western defense chiefs dedicated to coordinating support for Ukraine, on Thursday, and the NATO defense ministerial on Friday. Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown will also attend the Ukraine meeting.

One of the goals Western officials are working toward during meetings this week is developing a set of programs to create a “bridge” toward Ukraine’s NATO membership ahead of the NATO Summit in Washington next month, the senior DOD official said. Officials are also working to help Ukraine’s military be ready to go once Kyiv does join NATO, including potentially direct NATO training of Ukrainian forces to ensure they can work with NATO forces — which is a requirement for membership, the official said.

“This is not something that we just started doing. It’s something that’s coming to fruition in the next couple of months,” the senior DOD official said.

Still, former officials say that the EU elections, and the upcoming U.S. election, are top of mind for those supporting Ukraine. The starkest example of the rightward shift is in France, where Marine Le Pen’s National Rally trounced President Emmanuel Macron’s moderate Renaissance movement. The vote prompted Macron to call snap legislative elections in June and July, a major gamble that could see Le Pen’s party further surge support in France.

As president, Macron has authority over matters of national security and foreign policy, so the direction of French policy on Ukraine likely won’t change much, said Conley, noting that Macron has become a leader of Europe’s support for Kyiv. He recently pledged Mirage fighter jets for Ukraine’s air force.

But if Le Pen’s party wins an outright majority in the snap elections, the country’s government will become absorbed in domestic politics and efforts to pass new policy initiatives or funding to support Ukraine could be frozen, Conley said.

“If the gamble is lost by Macron and Le Pen and her group win and they get the national assembly, then assistance from France could be a bit turbulent,” said Jim Townsend, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy, noting that Le Pen has ties to Russia. “On the Ukraine stage or on the defense stage, they will not be supportive of a lot of the stuff that Macron wants to do.”

Meanwhile in Germany, center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz also suffered a blow, losing badly to the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which is not supportive of sending more money to Ukraine. While there will be no immediate change to German support for Kyiv, the EU election results are a warning to Scholz’s party that he might be “on borrowed time,” Townsend said.

Far-right and far-left members of Germany’s parliament didn’t attend a speech by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Berlin on Tuesday, Conley noted, another indicator of lagging support for the war effort.

With Ursula von der Leyen set to remain in power at the European Parliament, EU support to Ukraine won’t change much, Townsend said. The EU has provided tens of billions of euros to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion, including a new pledge in February to send an additional package of €50 billion for Kyiv through 2027.

But Western officials are already making moves to lock in domestic support for the war and send as much aid to Ukraine as possible in the coming months. In addition to Macron’s pledge to send Mirages, President Joe Biden has directed the Pentagon to rush weapons to Ukraine, including a new Patriot air defense battery, after Congress stalled for months in passing additional funding for the war effort. Scholz said in recent days that Germany would send a second Patriot to Ukraine by the end of June.

And officials are also discussing a proposal to institutionalize the Ukraine Defense Contact Group by moving it under NATO’s leadership. The move would be a way to ensure a new U.S. administration could not dissolve the group, which has been crucial to arming Ukraine since the early days of the war in 2022.