European leaders have been accused of lacking the capacity to follow through on their threats against Russia over the war in Ukraine.
British former Conservative minister Jacob Rees-Mogg warned that, given the economic constraints facing the bloc, getting into a fight now with Russia is not feasible, in terms of military and funding capacity. Several European countries are struggling with high government debt, stagnant growth and inflation.
“They’ll have to be careful about this, because they [Europe] don't have the capacity to do anything about it,” he told On the Record with Hadley Gamble. “Because they haven't spent any money on [defence] for a very long time.”
US President Donald Trump, he added, “isn’t going to pay for it”.
“I think going to war with Russia would not be in anybody's interests: not Russian interests, and not the interest of Russia's neighbours,” Mr Rees-Mogg said.
With the US set to hold high-level meetings this weekend with Russian and Ukrainian officials in Miami, the EU has agreed to provide Kiev with a $105 billion loan to keep the country afloat.
European leaders, effectively sidelined by the US and Russia in talks about Ukraine's future, are focusing less on the terms of a peace deal and more on what they say is a growing threat from Russia.
In a speech in Berlin this month, Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte called for a “wartime mindset”, warning Russia could be ready to use military force against Europe in the next five years.
This week, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz echoed his tone, telling newspaper ZDF that Europe is “no longer at peace” with Russia and warning that Germany would respond if attacked.
His comments come after increasingly hostile words from the Kremlin, which views Europe’s latest remarks as “sabre-rattling” and “irresponsible”.
Mr Rees-Mogg attributes the current situation in Ukraine to France and Germany's handling of the Minsk agreements, brokered in 2014 and 2014 in an attempt to stop the border conflict, suggesting that Germany's dependence on Russian gas and alleged corruption among senior politicians have contributed to the crisis.
“France and Germany must take a lot of responsibility for what is going on in Ukraine at the moment because of the Minsk agreements,” he said. “Some very senior German politicians made a lot of money out of Russian gas as well, so Germany and France are culpable at getting us to where we are.”
While European leaders' increasingly hawkish stance on Russia may be driven by a desire to assert independence from US influence, he said the need for a peaceful resolution to the Ukraine conflict was paramount.
“If you're a believer in nation states, you have to protect their borders,” Mr Rees-Mogg said. “So it is in the interests of the UK, Germany, France and indeed the United States to secure a border in Ukraine. It is unlikely that that border will be the border it was in 2014. That is a sad reality.”
