Foreign desk: Why Europe Hedges on Ukraine

“High-ranking EU representatives are regularly visiting Kyiv and promising President Volodymyr Zelensky immense military, economic and diplomatic aid,” notes Ralph Gert Schöllhammer at The Wall Street Journal. “These promises will be hard to keep once they collide with the cold realities of European politics.” Indeed, it’s “become obvious” that “many European states care more about ending the war than about who wins.” The continent “hedges its support for Ukraine” because the European Union “is built around Germany and France, and both” have “jealously guarded their position as” Europe’s “ultimate decision makers.” Allowing Ukraine into the union “could lead to a competing Warsaw-Kyiv axis,” with the Paris-Berlin axis “replaced by growing Eastern European influence.”