Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova’s answer to a media question about the support for Ukraine approved at the EU summit on February 1
Question: Despite the multiplying conflicts in the world, growing internal differences between the EU member countries, acute socioeconomic problems in some European countries and the fatigue of European society from the Ukrainisation of all aspects of life there, the EU political leadership announced at the February 1 summit its decision to allocate billions to support the Ukrainian regime. What motivates EU politicians to do this?
Maria Zakharova: The European Union has undergone a dramatic change in the past few years. It has stopped being a successful economic association and has chosen a policy of confrontation with those who underwrote its prosperity for many decades, in part, Russia. Despite its slogans about “strategic autonomy” and ending external dependence in the economy, the EU has completely submitted to Washington. This policy is propped up by an active disinformation campaign that is imposing on the public a myth about “a threat from the East.”
The EU’s current internal and external policy shows that European institutions are completely divorced from the genuine interests of the Europeans. To appreciate this, it is enough to look at what was happening in the streets of Brussels and other European cities before and during the EU’s special summit on February 1. At a time, when European farmers are calling for help, their political leaders shut the windows and decide to send another 50 billion euros to the Ukrainian regime. In general, it is clear where these funds will land, considering the unprecedented corruption that has turned Ukraine into Europe’s black hole. These Nazi timeservers do not care that the burden of paying back European funds will have to be shouldered by future generations of Ukrainians. Meanwhile, 33 billion of this sum will be loaned to Kiev, which will further push Ukraine into the debt abyss. Another 17 billion euros are grants that need not be paid back. They will come, in part, from the funds that the EU will get as profit from investing frozen Russian assets. In fact, we will have to deal with this commonplace robbery so typical of the “rules-based order” that the West seeks to impose on the international community.
Europe’s chief diplomat is boasting that the EU and its member countries have already spent 28 billion euros on the supplies of weapons and other military equipment to Kiev. In his estimate, the EU will spend another 21 billion euros for the same purposes. Once again, promises were made to supply Ukraine with 1 million units of artillery ammunition and missiles, but no longer in March – at best, by the end of the year.
The overwhelming majority of ordinary Europeans are the hardest hit by the militarisation of the EU economy. The US military-industrial complex is reaping the main economic benefits. According to statistics, the US produces 60 percent of the military products that are frequently bought by European states. The same applies to US gas that is coming to Europe in liquid form. European industry and average Europeans pay much more for it than the Russian pipeline gas that the EU is gradually turning its back on in order to please Washington. In this way, ordinary Europeans are being forced to pay for US prosperity out of their own pocket. In the meantime, the European economy is stagnating and becoming less and less competitive.
The EU wants to overcome its financial crisis by forcing its economy down a military path, despite the potential challenge this poses to global security. The absence of a system for monitoring the location of manufactured weapons and military hardware will lead to even more theft of these arms. They will inundate the black market and conflict zones and aggravate terrorist threats around the world.
