For the past year, Ukraine has been fighting a full-scale invasion by Russia. Despite the Russian army’s less than stellar performance, President Vladimir Putin has shown no signs of abandoning the conflict. The West has responded with unwavering commitment to economic sanctions on Russia, and has also provided military support to Ukraine. US President Joe Biden made an unannounced visit to Kyiv and pledged that Washington will back Ukraine “for as long as it takes”, while Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni travelled to Kyiv to meet with the Ukrainian president and affirmed Italian support for Ukraine. At this year’s Munich Security Conference, other European leaders pledged their support for Ukraine and even recognised they had been too slow to provide it with the weaponry needed to push Russia further back towards the pre-February 24 lines of control.
However, Western support for Ukraine has been lacking in certain respects. The West has not endorsed writing off Ukrainian debt, while proposals that assets seized from the Russian central bank and blacklisted Russian oligarchs be given to Kyiv as compensation have yet to progress. It has also faced bottlenecks in terms of production and struggled with getting third countries to approve transfers, which threaten its ability to supply Kyiv with sufficient ammunition. Western policy is effectively too reactionary and piecemeal.
The lack of a formal alliance between the West and Ukraine is a risk that needs to be addressed. As the conflict has transformed into a war of attrition, Putin is now clearly hoping to wait out the West on its support for Ukraine and thus secure a victory on the battlefield in the long term. Former US President Donald Trump is the odds-on favourite to be the Republican nominee again in the 2024 presidential race, and he has increasingly criticised Western support for Kyiv. Europe also still has its own prominent politicians who are sympathetic to Putin’s arguments, such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.
To preclude the risk of support for Ukraine wavering due to disunity, the West must begin to consider the long game in its own strategy. One crucial step is to conclude a formal alliance with Ukraine. This does not have to offer formal security guarantees mandating Western intervention, but should provide a legal and enduring basis to solidify the current reality that Ukraine and the West are each other’s foremost allies. Such an alliance could build on the precedent of the declarations on defence and security cooperation signed between the UK and Sweden and Finland last May, which preceded their NATO applications. These agreements pledge support when a member comes under attack but do not mandate direct intervention.
Guaranteeing enduring Western support is the only hope of forcing the Russian president to the negotiating table. Failing that, it would ensure he loses on the battlefield. The West must take steps now to ensure that it does not abandon Ukraine in its fight against Russia, and a formal alliance between the two would be an important step in this direction.