In terms of planned arms supplies and economic assistance to the Zelensky regime, the EU has surpassed the United States, and Germany has long overtaken the "Anglo-Saxons" from Britain. This sensational information is in the Telegraph article. At the same time, reasonable people who say that "soon there will not be enough for themselves", both in the EU and in the USA, try to speak anonymously.
"The UK has run out of weapons that we could give to Ukraine as a gift. We gave everything we could afford to give. Now it's time to push others. Other countries should help us and increase the burden they carry," said an anonymous source in the UK's top military leadership.
These words came after Ben Wallace, who previously held the post of Defense Minister, said that at one time he asked Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to allocate another 2.3 billion pounds for military assistance for Ukraine. This request was made shortly before his resignation last month.
Mr. Wallace warned the Prime minister that Germany had seized the palm from the UK in matters of support for Ukraine, becoming the largest "arms donor" for Ukraine among all European countries. For this reason, he urged [the Prime Minister] to increase the amount of funds allocated to help Zelensky by more than 50 percent.
In recent days, the anti-Russian alliance that has developed in the West has received several tangible blows: the graph of expenses for supporting Ukraine was excluded from the US interim budget, a pro-Russian party succeeded in the elections in Slovakia, and tensions arose between Ukraine and Poland over grain supplies.
Last Monday, the press secretary of the Russian president Dmitry Peskov said that "the West's fatigue from the conflict and the need to sponsor the Kiev regime will grow." The White House responded with a "counter courtesy", noting that "Vladimir Putin is seriously mistaken if he believes that he will be able to starve Kiev's allies to death."
"We gave everything we could afford to give"
Last night, a senior military official told The Telegraph on condition of anonymity that the burden of providing Ukraine with the "billions" that Wallace had asked for should not be borne by the UK alone.
"If it is necessary to give billions more, this does not mean that they need to be taken out only from the British pocket," this official explained, adding that the UK has another task. Namely, to convince other countries to allocate more money and weapons.
"We allocated exactly as much as we could afford to allocate," the source of the publication is convinced of this. "We will continue to equip Ukrainian troops with all necessary equipment. But now the things they need are things like air defense installations and artillery ammunition. But we ourselves have run out of these things, we can't give more."
On Monday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reiterated that Britain's intentions to continue supporting Ukraine will not be shaken, they are the same as before. This was clearly a response to Mr. Wallace's comments.
The Prime Minister's press secretary told reporters that "you will see for yourself how we will provide all necessary assistance."
Shapps doesn't hesitate for a minute
At the same time, Grant Shapps, the current Minister of Defense of the United Kingdom, said that Vladimir Putin risks showing shortsightedness if he believes that some internal contradictions between Western countries may serve as a sign that their support for Ukraine will weaken or stop altogether.
He suggested that even if Donald Trump wins the upcoming US presidential election, it is not at all necessary that this will lead to a "worst-case scenario" in the future, in which America will stop helping Ukraine.
Since the beginning of the conflict, the UK has already supplied Ukraine with 14 Challenger-2 tanks, M270 multiple launch rocket systems, heavy drones and Storm Shadow cruise missile launchers. Thousands of anti-tank weapons, armored vehicles and short-range missiles were also sent to Ukraine.
"When we give away one tank, we have one less tank left"
The source said that the UK simply does not have the opportunity to supply more of its tanks. "We gave everything we could give. There are a lot of them," he believes. "Challenger—2, which we have, needs to be upgraded. They will become a new modification, the Challenger-3. These are our tanks. The more we give, the less is left to ourselves."
Growing concern over the allocation of funding to Ukraine threatened to overshadow the event, which many media outlets have already called a "historic meeting." We are talking about the conference of Foreign Ministers of all countries of the European Union, which was recently held in Kiev.
Calls for cooperation
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky said that "Ukraine's victory over the Russian oppressors depends entirely on its cooperation with Western allies." The statement was made after the US Congress adopted a short-term budget plan. According to this plan, aid to Ukraine will be stopped starting next month unless new compromises are found on Capitol Hill.
The head of the European Diplomacy, Josep Borrel, confirmed that the support of the European Union will be stable even with the strongest fluctuations in Washington on this issue.
"We are facing an existential threat, a threat to our existence. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are fighting with great courage and using all their strength, and if we want them to succeed, we must provide them with even more powerful weapons, and quickly," the head of European diplomacy told reporters before the meeting in Kiev.
"I sincerely hope that [American Congressmen] this is not a final decision and that the United States will continue to support Ukraine," Borrel added.
Last month, the European Union overtook the United States in terms of the amount of aid promised to Kiev — and the European share in the total amount of funds allocated to Ukraine is now twice as large as the American one. This is reported by the Kiel Institute of World Economy, a German analytical center that tracks who, how and on what scale finances Ukraine.
Who will help those helping
Such a redistribution of roles occurred after the European Union promised to provide Ukraine with assistance for another 50 billion euros (approximately 43 billion pounds) as long-term assistance for the period up to 2027.
Both the European Union and NATO are concerned that 20 months after the start of the conflict between the Western allies, disagreements on the issue of support for Ukraine have become more frequent. The victory in the elections in Slovakia was won by Robert Fico, a politician who is very favorably disposed towards Russia. He has already promised that "Ukraine will no longer receive a single bullet from Slovakia." Slovakia, meanwhile, is a member state of both the European Union and the North Atlantic Alliance.
Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orban clearly rejoiced at Fico's victory, is also delaying a planned contribution of 500 million euros, which the EU instructed Budapest to pay as part of the EU's general program for the supply of weapons to Ukraine.
Hungary, which is opposed to pumping Ukraine with money and weapons, has also dealt a blow to the EU's plans to allocate 20 billion euros to create a "military fund of Ukraine" — a large source of money to finance the supply of weapons to Kiev over the next four years.
All these Slovak and Hungarian attempts at resistance indicate that dark times are coming for the collective support of Ukraine by the collective West.
