Europe refuses to completely and immediately corner the Putin regime

The most warlike 48 hours in the recent history of NATO and the EU begins this Thursday in Brussels.

For the first time, the two organizations celebrate an Atlantic Council and a European Council, respectively, with an open war between two countries in the Old Continent.

The greatest security threat in Europe since the end of World War II will lead the NATO summit to double its military deployment in Eastern countries in response to the threatening presence of the Russian Army in Ukraine.

The European Council, for its part, will include the participation of the US president, Joe Biden, to study a tightening of sanctions against Russia with the aim of bending the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

The EU's partners, however, are resisting Washington's desire to corner the Kremlin with an embargo on oil and gas exports that would leave it without foreign funding for its war.

The two summits, to which is added that of the G7 also this Thursday in Brussels, have as a backdrop a human drama such as was not remembered in Europe.

The Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, will participate telematically in the three appointments, as proof of the crucial role that his country plays at this time in the history of Europe.

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More than a million and a half Ukrainian refugee children in Europe, many of them unaccompanied by adults;

a network of 10,000 hospital beds prepared to care for refugees (3.7 million so far) who arrive sick or with chronic illnesses;

risk of famine for the population that remains in the country attacked by Russia and for that of third countries that depended on its agricultural exports;

destruction of entire cities by bombing and a foreseeable post-war period that, according to some calculations, will require a genuine European Marshall Plan of at least 100,000 million euros to rescue Ukraine from the abyss.

"What we see in Ukraine is horrific, painful, human suffering and a scale of violence that we have not seen in Europe since the Second World War," said the NATO Secretary General,

Faced with this dramatic scenario, NATO and EU sources do not hesitate to describe this week's summits as "historic" and a turning point for both organizations.

Although the urgency of the energy price crisis marks the agenda of national leaders —and in particular that of Spain's Pedro Sánchez—, the summits on Thursday and Friday must not only agree on measures to mitigate the rise in electricity prices and gas, but also to rethink the continent's security and defense policy.

"The decisions that we will make tomorrow [Thursday] will have far-reaching implications," Stoltenberg said.

The leader of the Alliance foresees a reinforcement of investment in Defense, which has been on the rise for seven years, due to "a new sense of urgency" and because "peace cannot be taken for granted".

Stoltenberg himself is facing a call to extend his mandate, which expires in September, and thus avoid a change of command in the midst of a security crisis.

"That is up to the 30 allies to decide, my task now is to prepare for the summit," said the secretary general.

The Atlantic summit, for now, will approve the deployment of four battalions on the eastern flank: in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, four of the allies closest to the battlefield.

The new positions are added to those already deployed in Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which will significantly increase the number of allied troops ready to face the Russians in case of attack.

Stoltenberg recalled that the US already has 100,000 soldiers on the continent and that another 40,000 operate under direct NATO command, with five allied aircraft carrier formations sailing in the Baltic and the Mediterranean.

Added to NATO's deterrence effort is the unprecedented economic punishment that Westerners have imposed on Russia since the invasion of Ukraine began on February 24.

Biden will ask European leaders to tighten the punishment, above all by preventing Russia from dodging sanctions with the help of third countries.

Embargo on energy exports

Some EU partners, such as Poland or the Baltic countries, also argue that the time has come to try to give the Putin regime the economic finishing touch, with a total or partial embargo on its energy exports.

But the partners potentially most affected by this rupture, such as Germany, the Netherlands or Hungary, are resisting due to the repercussions on their economies.

And a third group, in which Spain seems comfortable, considers it necessary to reserve ammunition to punish Putin in the event of a war escalation.

They also fear causing the collapse of a country the size of Russia, whose fall into political and economic chaos could further destabilize the Old Continent.

Community sources point out that the priority at this time should be "in the application of the sanctions adopted so far."

A punishment that, according to those same sources, "has already brought the Russian economy to its knees."

The Moscow Stock Exchange was forced to close on February 28, with the first sanctions, and has only partially opened this Wednesday, with 33 securities trading.

The Bank of Russia had to double interest rates, up to 20%.

And the value of the ruble plummeted, although it has recovered slightly in recent days thanks, in part, to the fact that Moscow has continued to invoice some 700 million euros a day with gas and oil sales to the EU.

But Russia's growing aggressiveness, with the use of hypersonic missiles against civilian targets in Ukraine and continued threats to resort to nuclear weapons, makes maintaining a normal trade relationship with Moscow increasingly politically untenable.

The European Commission has approved this Wednesday a draft regulation with which the Russian giant Gazprom can be forced to sell its gas storage centers in the EU - it controls half of the European reserves - if it keeps them almost empty, as it began to do before the war.

The pressure is also redoubled for the EU to put an end to purchases of Russian oil, with which it covers a third of its imports.

And the renunciation of gas, much more difficult due to the high dependence of several European countries, is not contemplated in the medium term, although it is not ruled out either.

The EU is also going to equip itself on the food front, since Putin's war not only endangers the great gas station that is Russia, but also the gigantic bakery that is Ukraine.

kyiv supplies 10% of the world wheat market.

Several countries in North Africa and the Middle East import 50% of their cereals from Ukraine and Russia.

And Ukraine is the fourth agri-food supplier to the EU and covers 52% of its imports of corn, 19% of common wheat and 23% of vegetable oils.

The EU's economic vice-president, Valdis Dombrovskis, has accused Russia of "deliberately attacking Ukraine's food stocks and storage points".

And European Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski has compared Putin's aggression "to the methods used by the Soviets in the 1930s against Ukraine," when Stalin's regime caused famines that killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Dombrovskis assures that, despite the serious situation, "the EU does not face a problem of food availability, because it is largely self-sufficient in agricultural products."

But he has recognized that the increase in energy and agricultural prices can make it difficult for the most vulnerable Europeans to access food.

In any case, the EU will have to help the most affected neighboring countries.

The Commission has approved an aid program of 500 million euros (64.4 million for Spain) to help farmers hardest hit by the crisis.

It has also temporarily repealed rules that require certain parts of farmland to be kept fallow for ecological reasons in order to increase this year's harvests.

The EU itself faces the challenge of feeding the more than 3.7 million people who have fled from Ukraine in just over a month, with a rate that, according to the Commission, has dropped from 200,000 daily entries to 50,000, but could increase at any time if the Russian attack intensifies.

Almost two million have left the first country of entry (Poland, Romania or Hungary, above all) and have continued to other parts of the community territory, so that almost all the EU partners are absorbing part of the exodus.

The Commission has approved this Wednesday several guidelines for States to fulfill the obligations to provide health services, education, accommodation and the right to work to Ukrainian refugees, as provided for in the directive on international protection activated for the first time in history to respond to the largest wave of refugees since the end of World War II.

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