EU states tell bloc’s bank to lend more for defense

PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday called on military chiefs from across Europe and beyond to draw up a plan “to define credible security guarantees” for Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire, the presidency said.
His appeal, in a closed-door Paris meeting of top brass from more than 30 allied states, came as Ukraine endorsed an American proposal for a month-long ceasefire and agreed to immediate negotiations with Russia, in pivotal talks in Saudi Arabia.
Macron has sought to rally a European response to Washington’s shock policy shift in US-Russia relations.
The Paris meeting gathered representatives from 34 countries — most of them from Europe and NATO, but also from Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
There was no representative from the United States, which is the leading member of NATO.
“This is the moment when Europe must throw its full weight behind Ukraine, and itself,” Macron told the meeting, according to the Elysee.
“In view of the acceleration of peace negotiations,” it was necessary to start planning to “define credible security guarantees” to make a lasting peace in Ukraine a reality, the French presidency reported Macron as saying.
Macron has teamed up with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to lead efforts to form a “coalition of the willing” to enforce an eventual ceasefire in Ukraine.
According to the Elysee, the military chiefs of staff from European and NATO nations — including Britain and Turkiye — agreed that the security guarantees “should not be separated from NATO and its capabilities.”
Such guarantees should be “credible and long-term, and should be accompanied by unfailing support for the Ukrainian army,” according to the Elysee.
More than three years since Russia invaded its neighbor, Europe is scrambling to boost its defenses and break free from dependence on the United States.
It has been unsettled by Trump renewing contacts with Russian leader Vladimir Putin and criticizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, raising fears that the US president may try to force Ukraine to accept a settlement favoring Russia.
Trump suspended military aid and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv, though his administration late on Tuesday indicated it would lift the freeze after Ukraine endorsed then American proposal.
Macron later posted on X that “the ball is now clearly in Russia’s court,” and hailed the “progress” made in peace talks in Saudi Arabia.
Ahead of the Paris defense meeting, French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu said: “We will reject any form of demilitarization of Ukraine.”
“It is simply a question of looking ahead and thinking about what the Ukrainian army should be in the future,” Lecornu added.
On Friday, the French president, who has pushed his country’s defense industry to switch to “war economy mode,” is set to meet with defense manufacturers, according to a member of his team.
Defense ministers from Europe’s five main military powers — France, Britain, Germany, Italy and Poland — are to meet in the French capital on Wednesday. EU and NATO representatives and the Ukrainian defense minister will also take part.
Those talks will center on the “necessary rearmament of Europe” and military support to Ukraine, one of Lecornu’s aides said.
Starmer will, in turn, host virtual talks on Saturday with leaders of the nations willing to help support the ceasefire.
Macron has said any European troops in Ukraine would be deployed only “once a peace deal is signed, to guarantee it is fully respected.”
He has also said he would be ready to discuss extending France’s nuclear deterrent to European partners.
Last week, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen unveiled a plan to mobilize around 800 billion euros ($843 billion) for Europe’s defense and help provide “immediate” military support for Ukraine.
France also plans to raise defense spending, with Lecornu referring to a target of around 100 billion euros ($109 bn) a year, compared to 50.5 billion euros in 2025.

KYIV: The images shared by Kremlin-controlled media were shocking: Russian troops hunched, dirt on their faces, as they crept through an empty gas pipeline under Ukrainian defense lines.
Since Kyiv launched its audacious cross-border assault into the Kursk region last August, Moscow has been pushing back hard, using unconventional tactics and deploying thousands of North Korean troops to turf out the Ukrainian army.
They have since stepped up their advances.
In the past five days, Moscow has broken through Kyiv’s defensive lines, reclaiming dozens of square kilometers of territory, according to military bloggers.
Russian military bloggers reported Tuesday that Moscow’s troops had entered the town of Sudzha, the largest settlement in the region under Kyiv’s control.
“The enemy is retreating in panic and disorder without have received any orders. That’s it. It’s a collapse,” a Russian serviceman, who identified himself as Zombie, told Kremlin-run television.
The result is that Kyiv may have lost one of its only bargaining chips on swapping land with Russia, which has seized and occupied around a fifth of Ukraine since it took Crimea in 2014 and launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
For Ukraine, which has painted a more controlled picture of the fighting, the stakes of its difficult operation in Kursk could hardly be higher.
The assault last summer injected a much-needed morale boost into the Ukrainian war effort, and represented the first and only incursion by a foreign army into Russian territory since World War II.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said the operation was key to future negotiations on ending the war, and that holding Russian territory would give Kyiv vital leverage.
But that leverage — just as Washington starts rounds of talks with Moscow and Kyiv — is dwindling as Russian forces press forward.
Franz-Stefan Gady, a military analyst, said Russia had built up its force in Kursk over recent weeks and escalated strikes on Ukraine’s “tenuous” supply route.
“The result is that now that the Russians are pushing a lot. Parts of the front line are actually giving way,” he told AFP.
The British defense ministry estimates Ukraine controls around 300 square kilometers (115 square miles) of Kursk — a five-fold territorial loss since Kyiv launched its gambit.
On Monday, Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky conceded the situation was worsening.
He dismissed reports Ukrainian troops were in danger of being encircled but acknowledged they had been forced to fall back and that he was sending forward reinforcements.
One Ukrainian soldier who had been deployed in Kursk told AFP on Monday his unit had “fortunately” withdrawn five days earlier, and described fighting there as “very” hard.
Another, who had overseen operations from inside Ukraine and also asked not to be identified to speak freely about the dynamics of the fighting, said Russia’s use of drones to disrupt logistics was a key problem.
“It was the end, so to speak. And we started to get out of there because if we didn’t, we would have been surrounded,” he said, recounting the decision of some troops to leave Kursk due to resupply problems and Russian advances.
From the outset, analysts were skeptical of the purpose of diverting thousands of Ukrainian troops and key military assets from front lines inside Ukraine that were under immense Russian pressure.
With Moscow now clawing back land, this question remains.
Russia last week even claimed to have captured a village inside Ukraine, Novenke, which lies just several kilometers from the vital Ukrainian resupply route into Kursk.
The Institute for the Study of War has warned Moscow is “consolidating” its gains and likely preparing to attack the largest town still under Ukrainian control, Sudzha.
The situation is complicated off the battlefield, too.
Since President Donald Trump returned to office in January, he has sought to bring a speedy end to the fighting, halting US military aid and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv.
A Ukrainian official told AFP it was possible the US moves were having an effect on fighting as Washington had stopped sharing information that “allowed strikes specifically on Russia.”
But Gady cautioned against drawing any direct link between the halt in US backing and fighting in Kursk.
“I, first and foremost, see it as a difficult situation that was already difficult prior to the cessation of US military support,” Gady said.
“You run your supplies essentially down one major route that is under enemy fire, right, and that’s a challenge — and that will be a challenge with US military support as well,” he said.