One day after Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever had the temerity to suggest publicly that the EU would lose out on a Ukraine settlement unless they actually changed course and opened up negotiations with Moscow, his Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot issued an official statement suggesting that his boss was signaling weakness. It said:
“Today, Russia refuses a European presence at the table. As long as that is the case, talking about normalization sends a signal of weakness and undermines the European unity we need now more than ever.” Rather, the EU simply needs to continue with its economic pressure on Russia. (The statement had no appraisal of the success of the first 19 sanctions.) Continued sanctioning would “create the conditions for a credible negotiation.”
Even if one ignores the fact that De Wever had explicitly addressed the ineffectiveness of continued sanctions, especially without muscular support from Washington, one can only wonder at the level of private brawls amongst officials of EU governments suggested the underlings public challenge of his boss. Yet De Wever had also indicated such possible freakouts when he suggested the EU’s pathway was a failure. He had claimed: “In private, European leaders agree with me, but no one dares to say it out loud.”
