A Financial Times Editorial Board statement Oct. 2, run under the headline “How To Lock In Support for Ukraine for the Long Haul” betrays London’s extreme distress over how things are spinning out of their control on the Ukraine war. The editorial was triggered by the vote that day in the U.S. House of Representatives to remove Rep. Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, but their concern goes way beyond that.
“These are trying times for Ukraine,” the editorial began. “Four months in, its counteroffensive against Russia’s invasion has not achieved the hoped-for breakthroughs. Support for Kyiv, meanwhile, is becoming a political football in some Western allies. The U.S. Congress at the weekend jettisoned $6 billion of aid to Kyiv to avert a government shutdown. In Slovakia, populist Robert Fico’s party won the highest vote in an election with an anti-Ukraine stance, days after Poland’s premier appeared to threaten a halt in weapons donations to Kyiv amid a dispute over grain exports. The conclusion is clear: Ukraine’s Western allies must find ways both to speed up support for Ukraine and to lock it in for the future, in what now seems set to be a multiyear war of attrition.”
