STOCKHOLM: EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called on Saturday for European nations to provide long-range weapons for Ukraine to help it counter Russian strikes, while accelerating arms deliveries overall.
“The Russians are bombing from far away so the Ukrainians have to have the capacity to reach... the same distance, the same range,” Borrell said after a meeting with Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in Stockholm.
“But we have to speed up,” he said, as Germany announced a new weapons package for Ukraine worth 2.7 billion euros ($2.95 billion), including tanks, armored vehicles and air-defense systems.
“I welcome the German effort and invite all member states to follow this example,” Borrell said.
On Thursday, Britain said it would send its Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine, becoming the first country to provide longer-range weapons to Kyiv.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has been urging Western allies to provide more advanced weapons ahead of a widely expected counter-offensive against Russian troops in eastern Ukraine.
“Instead of asking when will the counteroffensive begin, ask, have I done enough for the Ukrainian counter-offensive to begin and be successful?” Kuleba said at the press conference with Borrell.
“The main topics of my conversation with EU foreign ministers today will be a long-range artillery ammunition and short-range accession talks” to join the EU, Kuleba said.
Zelensky is seeking to accelerate the process for formal talks on EU membership for Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s invasion, launched in February 2022.
EU’s Borrell urges long-range weapons for Ukraine
https://arab.news/m93wn
EU’s Borrell urges long-range weapons for Ukraine
- "The Russians are bombing from far away so the Ukrainians have to have the capacity to reach... the same distance, the same range," Borrell said
- Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has been urging Western allies to provide more advanced weapons
EU leaders begin India visit ahead of ‘mother of all deals’ trade pact
- Antonio Luis Santos da Costa, Ursula von der Leyen are chief guests at Republic Day function
- Access to EU market will help mitigate India’s loss of access to US following Trump’s tariffs
New Delhi: Europe’s top leaders have arrived in New Delhi to participate in Republic Day celebrations on Monday, ahead of a key EU-India Summit and the conclusion of a long-sought free trade agreement.
European Council President Antonio Luis Santos da Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen arrived in India over the weekend, invited as chief guests of the 77th Republic Day parade.
They will hold talks on Tuesday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the EU-India Summit, where they are expected to announce a comprehensive trade agreement after years of stalled negotiations.
Von der Leyen called it the “mother of all deals” at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week — a reference made earlier by India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal — as it will create a market of 2 billion people.
“The India-EU FTA has been a long time coming as negotiations have been going on between the two for more than a decade. Some of the red lines that prevented the signing of the FTA continue to this date, but it seems that the trade negotiations have found a way around it,” said Anupam Manur, professor of economics at the Takshashila Institution.
“The main contentious issue remains the Indian government’s desire to protect the farmers and dairy producers from competition and the European Union’s strict climate-based rules and taxation. Despite this, both see enormous value in the trade deal.”
India already has free trade agreements with more than a dozen countries, including Australia, the UAE, and Japan.
The pact with the EU would be its third in less than a year, after it signed a multibillion CEPA (comprehensive economic partnership agreement) with the UK in July and another with Oman in December. A week after the Oman deal, New Delhi also concluded negotiations on a free trade agreement with New Zealand, as it races to secure strategic and trade ties with the rest of the world, after US President Donald Trump slapped it with 50 percent tariffs.
The EU is also facing tariff uncertainty. Earlier this month Trump threatened to impose new tariffs on several EU countries unless they supported his efforts to take over Greenland, which is an autonomous region of Denmark.
“The expediting factor in the trade deal is the unilateral and economically irrational trade decisions taken by their biggest trading partner, the United States,” Manur told Arab News.
Being subject to the highest tariff rates, India has been required to sign FTAs with other major economies. Access to the EU market would help mitigate the loss of access to the US.
The EU is India’s largest trading partner in goods, accounting for about $136 billion in the financial year 2024-25.
Before the tariffs, India enjoyed a $45 billion trade surplus with the US, exporting nearly $80 billion. To the EU’s 27 member states, it exports about $75 billion.
“This can be sizably increased after the FTA,” Manur said. “Purely in value terms, this would be the biggest FTA for India, surpassing the successful FTAs with the UK, Australia, Oman and the UAE.”
