The European Union Decides to Rearm
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You're listening to State of the World from NPR. We're the day's most vital international stories up close where they're happening. It's Thursday, March 6th. I'm Greg Dixon. In an emergency session, European Union leaders approved a plan to drastically increase defense spending. The plan is called Rearm Europe.

As to why the EU is making this move, the final document declares, Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine is an existential challenge for the European Union. To understand the ramifications, NPR's Ari Shapiro spoke to Terry Schultz in Brussels. Three years into the war, is this meeting happening now entirely because of Trump distancing the U.S. from Ukraine, or what's the reason?

Well, there already was huge concern here about the situation in Ukraine, but I'd say it has been greatly exacerbated in recent days by the Trump administration's suspension of U.S. assistance to Kyiv and the general expectation that U.S. will stop providing some of the important military assistance that's been Europe's own security backup in NATO.

So the EU is already the largest supplier of aid to Ukraine, though you'll often hear President Trump say it's the U.S. And now it's become clear that member countries will need to spend more if the U.S. stops helping Ukraine and if it also needs to worry more about its own territorial defense. Okay, tell us more about what the EU heads of state and government agree to in this joint statement.

Well, Ari, it's primarily a to-do list of how the top EU officials would like to see policies develop with regard to raising more money for defense spending. It doesn't at this point actually commit them to do any of these things. So the 27 leaders have agreed on the general principle that they will, quote, accelerate the mobilization of the necessary instruments and financing in order to bolster the security of the EU and the protection of their citizens. Now, that's a mouthful. So put more simply, here's how Commission President Ursula von der Leyen describes it.

So it is to the benefit of rearming Europe, rearming the European Union, but also arming Ukraine in its existential fight for its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

So the document welcomes new proposals to, for example, allow countries to circumvent EU penalties on going into too much debt as long as that extra spending is on defense. The idea is if all EU governments increase their defense spending by 1.5% for the next four years, it would add 650 billion euros, that's $700 billion, to the overall EU defense budget. How do these votes shake out?

Well, there was a second statement, and that one was not adopted unanimously. It was about Ukraine only, and it was adopted by 26 of the 27 heads of state and government because Hungary does not support Ukraine and doesn't want the other EU members to do it either. So Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban often holds up statements or funding to assist Kyiv.

So these conclusions are basically repeating EU positions, such as no negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine, no negotiations that affect European security without Europe's involvement, any peace agreement must have robust security guarantees for Ukraine, and that any peace must respect Ukraine's

independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. Now, those seem basic, Ari, but under current circumstances, for these leaders and surely for Ukrainian President Zelensky, it must feel reassuring to keep restating them. Terry Schultz in Brussels, thank you very much. You're welcome.

NPR's Steve Inskeep has been thinking about the list of recent developments in the relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine and what it could all mean for peace talks with Russia. Here's Steve. Let's review the order of some recent events. President Trump and Vice President Vance berated Zelensky in the White House, saying, among other things, that he argued too much and failed to say thank you in that particular meeting.

The U.S. paused military aid to Ukraine. Zelensky then said publicly the confrontation had been regrettable and that he was on board with a minerals deal and everything else the U.S. wanted. President Trump said he received a nice letter from Zelensky. And then we learned the U.S. also had paused intelligence sharing with Ukraine. How does all this look from Kiev?

Robert Hamilton is here. He's the head of Eurasia Research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and he's in the Ukrainian capital. Welcome to the program. Morning, Steve. Good to be with you. How are people there responding to the news?

Well, so people here in Kyiv are, of course, confused, frustrated and a little worried. What it looks like here and frankly, what it looks like to me as well is the U.S. is putting pressure on Ukraine, the victim of this war, while making unilateral concessions to Russia, the aggressor. And when you say unilateral concessions, that's things like making public statements that obviously Russia is going to get to keep Ukrainian territory and that sort of thing, right?

Exactly. Before the U.S. even sat down at the table with the Russians in Saudi Arabia for the first meeting, U.S. officials were making statements to the effect that Ukraine should give up on the idea of recovering its territorial integrity and should give up on the idea of NATO membership. Now, leave aside the fact that

that it would be difficult militarily for Ukraine to recover its territorial integrity. And that NATO membership, although it's been NATO policy since 2008, is still a sticky question for the 32 allies. But you don't give those away as unilateral concessions before you ever sit down with your interlocutor. Those are things that you may give away during a negotiation. But when you give it away before a negotiation starts, you just shrunk the bargaining space and moved it

in the direction of your adversary. So you've just ensured that whatever negotiation, whatever it yields, will be far more in the interest of the adversary. Now, I guess we should note the administration's point of view is they were just stating the obvious. Obviously, Ukraine's not going to recover its territory and that sort of thing. But now we have this recent chain of developments. How vital was the loss of intelligence sharing, which we learned about even after Zelensky had said he was on board with the administration?

Yeah, I think that's the most important and I think you correctly call it vital. It will have immediate effects and it'll have immediate effects in terms of lost Ukrainian lives. Two pieces of U.S. intelligence sharing are critical to Ukraine's ability to resist. The first is early warning of missile strikes. The U.S. can see missiles much more, much quicker than Ukrainians can. And so it gives Ukrainians more time to react and to get to cover both civilians and military. And then, you know,

The inability of Ukraine to target Russian command and control logistics and reserve formations, it was getting targeting data from the U.S. that allowed it to interdict Russian rear areas, which made it harder for Russia to press its advantage on the front. Now, that will stop as well. Is it clear to Ukrainians what it is the United States wants from Ukraine that Ukraine has not already at least said they would deliver? It's not.

Ukraine has said, President Zelensky here has said, the only thing that he's really, his only red line is some sort of post-ceasefire security guarantees, some sort of arrangement that gives Ukraine some confidence that Russia will not resume the war as soon as it's ready. And that's why in the Oval Office, Zelensky, when J.D. Vance started saying, we need to let diplomacy work, Zelensky started down the litany of all the diplomatic agreements that Ukraine and its partners, to include the U.S.,

had signed with Russia that the Russians had broken, culminating in the full-scale invasion of February 2022. Some people around President Trump have talked of replacing Zelensky in some way. What are Zelensky's supporters and opponents making of that? Well, one thing I'll say about the Friday meeting in the Oval Office is Zelensky's popularity here is far, far stronger than it was before the meeting. You know, polls here, they don't often ask directly, do you support the president? They ask confidence and trust.

And the latest polls I was able to find before the Oval Office meeting was about 57% support for Zelensky. It's certainly higher now, maybe 20 to 30%. We'll have to see when the next polls are taken, but he got a huge bump in popularity and

Ukrainians really rallied around him and rallied around their country. They felt like the attack on Zelensky was an attack on their country. Just to be clear, when you say 20 to 30 percent, you mean you think the approval is 20 to 30 percent higher than it was before, an overwhelming majority? Exactly, yeah. Okay. All right. Thanks very much for the insights. That's Robert Hamilton, head of Eurasia Research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Yzynkiv. That's the State of the World from NPR. Thanks for listening.

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