Orban’s “democratic ouster” is expected to remove Hungary’s procedural opposition to the EU’s planned €90 billion loan to Ukraine that’ll be financed by members raising common debt. RT published a detailed article about this plan here last December, which was a compromise for financing this loan after the bloc failed to reach a consensus to either outright confiscate some of Russia’s frozen assets for giving to Ukraine or use at least some of them as collateral for a loan to it. Readers can learn more here and here.
If everything goes according to plan, and Bloomberg reported that the bloc plans to move swiftly after Hungary held everything up for several months already, then this move risks funding a forever war. Hopes of a military breakthrough along the front or a diplomatic breakthrough in US-mediated talks have yet to materialize, so the pace of Russia’s on-the-ground advance remains glacial, thus meaning that it could take years to achieve Russia’s reported minimum goal of obtaining control over all of Donbass.
Funding two-thirds of the Ukrainian budget for the next two years per the EU’s goal would likely lead to another two-year round being agreed in order to encourage the US to continue its military aid. Ever since last summer, the US no longer donates arms to Ukraine but instead sells them to NATO, which then transfers them there. Even if Trump suspends these sales, so long as the Ukrainian budget is financed and nothing major changes, then it might hold out long enough for him to change his mind again.
To be sure, Ukraine cannot fight forever since even Zelensky’s new Chief of Staff Kirill Budanov recently admitted that it faces “a huge, huge problem” after new Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov revealed that over 2 million Ukrainians are dodging the draft, which seriously complicates operations at the front. There’s also always the chance that Putin will turn the special operation into a formal war in which he’d no longer care about civilian casualties in an attempt to decisively end the conflict on Russia’s terms.
There are two competing schools of thought about why he hasn’t yet done so. One speculates that he doesn’t want to inadvertently risk an escalation with the US that could easily spiral into World War III, while the other is that he still truly considers Russians and Ukrainians to be one people like he explained at length in summer 2021’s magnum opus, ergo his reluctance to see their civilians suffer. At any rate, the forever war scenario assumes that Putin won’t do this, which can’t be taken for granted.
Nevertheless, the EU operates under the assumption that he won’t do so, which explains why it plans to move swiftly to approve Ukraine’s €90 billion loan and still buys arms from the US for transfer to that country. This not only perpetuates the risk that tensions spiral out of control but also perpetuates the EU’s energy insecurity amidst the ongoing crisis caused by the Third Gulf War since an end to the conflict could hypothetically result in the resumption of Russian energy exports to the EU to its citizens’ benefit.
The EU’s unstated goal is to perpetuate the conflict till at least 2029 in the hope that the Democrats will regain control of the White House and resume the US’ Biden-era Ukrainian policy. Even though Europeans will economically suffer till then, not to mention more Russians and Ukrainians dying, the bloc is willing to pay these costs in pursuit of its ideologically driven goal of inflicting a strategic defeat upon Russia. Ultimately, however, the conflict might end up strategically defeating the EU instead.
