Berlin, Germany (Weltexpress). Woe to the vanquished, as they said in ancient times, but EU politicians see things quite differently. They are convinced that they can set conditions. However, if you take a closer look at the role of the EU, you could come to very different conclusions.
Yes, I am also in favour of this. ‘The central role of the European Union in securing peace for Ukraine must be fully reflected,’ as EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen demands. Provided, of course, that the mirror is big enough (and I don’t mean the former investigative newspaper from Hamburg).
After all, this central role begins right at the start. Namely with the ultimatum that the EU gave Ukrainian President Yanukovych in 2013 to decide for or against the Association Agreement when he (under pressure from the opposition) decided to review the draft of this agreement after all. That was the trigger for the Maidan, and we all know how that story ended: with a violent coup. But without that ultimatum, the whole game would never have begun. After all, the citizens of EU countries had to be told that the sometimes very strange characters on Kiev Square only wanted to ‘go to Europe’. The odd small swastika (or a five-metre-high portrait of Bandera directly to the right of the main stage) could be overlooked.
It is difficult to determine who was more deeply involved; the only thing that is certain is that Germany was the first to get involved, which then automatically drew in the rest of the EU. After all, as early as 1992, the troops temporarily stationed in Munich were sent back to Ukraine to revive the old cooperation partner there.
Of course, the United Kingdom, for example, which played no small part in destroying peace in Ukraine, is no longer a member of the Brussels club – but it was when the whole thing was cooked up and set in motion. And the current, heartily hated Prime Minister Keir Starmer would rather be back in Brussels today than tomorrow. But admittedly, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who at the time persuaded Zelensky to break off negotiations in Istanbul, did so without any EU involvement.
Or maybe not. After all, a few days later, they all turned up to stage and record the Butcha incident (for which it was recently announced that they now know which Russian commander was to blame – but still do not know the names of the dead), and so it has continued all these years. With the sanctions, with the playing out of individual motifs, i.e. after Bucha, the theatre in Mariupol, or the alleged Russian shelling of the Energodar nuclear power plant – there was no room for a sheet of paper between them, as if Brexit had never happened.
Incidentally, it was the then German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier who was the first to dig up the term ‘territorial integrity’ in 2014. I wondered where he got that from, which is why I still remember it. Historians of future decades will probably be busy trying to find out what started when and where and who passed it on; but in the end, the whole EU behaved like a flock of parrots.
And Commission President von der Leyen is also personally involved. After all, she already wanted to intervene with German troops in Ukraine in 2014, in the civil war, on the side of Kiev. Certainly always accompanied by her then aide Christian Freuding. It’s not as if she hadn’t already made it clear during her time as German defence minister that her suitability for peacekeeping is limited. In that sense, enthroning her in Brussels was part of the plan from the outset.
Of course, the US was also heavily involved, as evidenced by Victoria Nuland’s statement about the five billion dollars that had been invested in Ukraine (you can bet that has been recouped many times over by now). And they were clearly in command, at least until Donald Trump took office. Since then, every week we have to rethink whether this is just a bad play or whether the differences are real.
In fact, all those who were informed about this great ‘peace plan’ of the EU on public broadcasters or in the leading German media should be able to demand their money back. After all, it’s been the same old story for almost four years, even if the faces on the talk shows are dutifully rotated and every now and then a different politician is allowed to recite the slogans. No, no territorial concessions, Ukraine in NATO and also the possibility of stationing foreign troops there… and a military of 600,000 men is of course not enough. (Incidentally, this is an extremely interesting reaction, especially when it comes from Germans. Because there is this nasty old treaty that says Germany can have a maximum of 370,000 soldiers, you know, the one that says ‘only peace shall emanate from German soil’.)
This will probably not even stop when the Russian army is already standing in the middle of Kiev. They will then simply gather regularly with the looters who fled abroad in good time, with or without Zelensky, whom they have inflated into the ‘Ukrainian government in exile’, and continue to chant the mantra of ‘territorial integrity’ and ‘freedom of choice’. Yes, they may even introduce a ‘Ukraine Day’ in the calendar, when all the blue and yellow flags will be reactivated and hoisted on Western European flagpoles.
One might think that this is a fundamental misunderstanding. Because it is also repeatedly stated that Russia must not be allowed to get what it wants. Not as if the civil war in Donbass from 2014 onwards did not follow Clausewitz’s definition that ‘war […] is an act of violence’ to ‘compel the enemy to fulfil our will’. The will represented by Kiev meant subordination to Western strategy and Bandera ideology, but the attempt was unsuccessful twice, in the summer of 2014 and in the spring of 2015. Which is why the third attempt in February 2022 was to be so much more massive, which the Russian army then pre-empted.
Well, the will of the other side has long been on the table, with the unfinished Istanbul document and a few additions that have since become due; and when it comes to who imposes their will on whom, it is usually the victor in a military conflict who imposes it on the loser. If Bayern Munich tops the table at the end of the season, the trophy doesn’t go to Leverkusen; forgive me for the ethically inappropriate comparison, but I’m afraid that’s how it has to be broken down for the EU elites. Admittedly, the majority of the population in the EU has managed to keep the whole backstory under wraps to such an extent that the men in long-sleeved white jackets are still not being called in when they start another sentence with ‘Ukraine must’; but perhaps, hopefully, at some point these other men with metal bracelets will come and take them to where the air is well filtered.
In fact, according to Die Welt, a ‘former French government representative’ was particularly upset about one point in Trump’s plan: that the frozen Russian assets should not be made available to the EU. ‘The Europeans are working hard to find a viable solution for how the assets can be used for the benefit of the Ukrainians, and Trump wants to profit from it.’
Yes, it’s about money. Not about trifles like Russian participation in the G8. I would guess that this point, which even the EU did not want to change, provoked loud laughter in the Russian presidential office, and somewhere behind a desk you could probably hear someone say: ‘I’m glad I’m done with this meeting and don’t have to see these empty-headed people anymore.’ No, money as in ‘frozen central bank funds’.
The ‘European proposal’ then states: ‘Ukraine will be completely rebuilt and financially compensated, including through Russian state assets, which will remain frozen until Russia has compensated Ukraine for the damage.’ This wording, in the context of the rest of the drama at EU level, raises one suspicion in particular: that a large part of these funds are in fact no longer there, but have been used to cover expenses, and that all the manoeuvring that has taken place recently in relation to these funds was intended to conceal this fact.
And while we’re on the subject of money, the corruption scandal of recent weeks has, of course, also raised questions about the EU’s bigwigs. Even given the (very real) problem that their political careers could come to an abrupt end in the event of a highly visible defeat, all the EU politicians still seem overly eager. Instead of trying to limit the damage in the face of a military situation that is crying out for defeat, so as not to be dragged down with it, everything is being done with zeal to prevent an end to the war. This, too, can only be explained by immediate and personal material gains – by returns from Ukraine, from what US authorities now suspect, according to information provided by Larry Johnson, to be up to 45 billion embezzled US dollars. Money that is just as bloodstained as the million pounds that Boris Johnson may have received as a reward for preventing peace in Istanbul. Money that will only continue to flow as long as blood continues to be shed on the front lines. And above all, money whose existence could no longer be concealed if Western European societies were given a respite to look into the matter.
But let’s go back to the sentence at the beginning. It actually contains some interesting possibilities. Once you start thinking about EU assets somewhere, and about the fact that the cities that have been really badly destroyed are all located in the Russian Federation, and that usually, even if the EU leaders don’t believe it, it is the losers who have to pay reparations.
Donetsk, Mariupol, Krasnoarmeisk and all the other places in Donbass, such as Gorlovka, which is under constant bombardment, all have something to build on if there is to be peace. How many billions was the war worth to the EU? 98.9 billion, claims Statista; added to this are the funds that flowed through the individual countries; according to the same source, this amounted to 45.8 billion from Germany by 31 August 2025.
It’s not that there is no one from whom such billions could be obtained, which should actually be paid by the EU – yes, in the truly devastated part of the former Ukraine, i.e. in the Russian Federation. The nominal value of Rheinmetall’s capital, for example, was €111.51 million in 2021. The current market capitalisation is more than €67 billion. So €67 billion minus €111.51 million only exists because one, one and a half or even two million Ukrainians have been sacrificed in this war over the course of these years. Yes, that too is a remarkable return. And it could explain, for example, the passion of a certain Ms Strack-Zimmermann for this war, whose close relationship with the Düsseldorf-based company Rheinmetall has certainly taken the form of a block of shares. As long as one leaves out the third that Germany finances in the EU, even the rise in Rheinmetall’s share price alone is more than the German government has transferred to Ukraine from its budget. Let no one say that war is not worthwhile. However, it should not be forgotten that the reintroduction of sanctions on citizen’s income is expected to bring savings of just one billion. Just to put things into perspective.
So yes, the central role of the EU in relation to war and peace in Ukraine definitely needs to be examined more closely. And there should be a price to pay for those who promoted this war and profited from it. The people of Western Europe did not profit from it; they only had to bear the costs, in the form of energy prices and social cuts. But those who reaped the profits, and those who held out their hands and were paid from the corruption machine, they should, they must pay. From Ursula von der Leyen downwards.
