Europe has resources to win the war. Does it prefer to surrender?

An op-ed on VoxUkraine together with Ilona Sologoub

The op-ed is published here where you can read it in full.

Here are two quotes:

If superiority of the West had been used in 2014 (by introducing much more painful sanctions on Russia) or at least in the beginning of the full-scale war in 2022, the marathon race would have been much shorter, the costs would have been lower, and the war fatigue much less or even non-existent.

Freedom Flags

Source: Nordregio.

We didn’t help Ukraine in time. And since we don’t know if we can rely on USA anymore, Europe has to step up.

Trump’s victory in the US should be the wake-up call for Europe: do your best and prepare for the worst. Even without the US support, Europe has enough resources to win the war. There is at least $300 billion of frozen Russian money that can be used for Ukraine’s defense. Fears that confiscation of this money will cause financial instability are highly exaggerated. On the contrary, failing to defeat Russia will result in global war and financial instability.

The way the democracies respond to the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine is closely watched by Russia’s allies – China, Iran, and North Korea. Their regimes are assessing our help today to see if the West would help Taiwan, Israel and South Korea tomorrow.