Are the cracks beginning to show in Europe’s support of Ukraine?

Among Ukraine’s Western allies there was a widespread, but mostly unspoken, belief that if ever moral and military support for Kyiv started to crack, the weakest link could prove to be the United States.

Early skirmishing in the presidential election campaign had placed support for Ukraine in the spotlight; advocates for a swift end to the war had a prominent spokesman in Donald Trump, and the welcome for President Zelensky in Washington, where he visited last month after attending the UN General Assembly, seemed a good deal less effusive than before. The congressional compromise that averted a government shutdown only seemed to prove the point, in that it excluded President Biden’s multimillion-dollar aid package for Ukraine, if only temporarily.

As it transpires, however, it is not the United States that has turned out to be the weakest link but Slovakia, a neighbour of Ukraine and hitherto one of Kyiv’s most ardent allies. And Slovakia could be followed by Poland, making two of what might be called frontline states in the Ukraine war – and two of the hitherto most enthusiastic supporters of Kyiv and most die-hard adversaries of Russia – responsible for opening the first significant breaches in European, and Western, solidarity.

Still more unnerving perhaps, for the rest, is the fact that the policy reversal in Slovakia comes as the result of a democratic election, held last weekend. And the same would apply if Slovakia’s example is followed by Poland, which holds parliamentary elections on 15 October. In other words, a change in government policy towards Ukraine would reflect a popular mandate, rather than internal party squabbling or point-scoring.

The Slovak election was won – after an early exit poll proved to be rogue – by Robert Fico, the frontrunner for most of the campaign, and it is he who will most likely form the country’s next government and become its new prime minister. It hardly needs to be said that Fico, a political veteran of 59, who would take the reins of government for the fourth time, was not the candidate favoured by most of Slovakia’s partners in the European Union.

Not only does Fico come with substantial personal baggage – equivocation about the death of a journalist that helped precipitate his resignation in 2018, persistent corruption allegations, and a philosophical and political affinity with the EU’s least popular leader, Viktor Orban of Hungary – but he had spearheaded his Smer (Social Democracy) party’s election campaign with pledges to end all military support for Ukraine, enshrined as “not one bullet”, and press for negotiations with Russia to end the killing.

The shorthand European verdict on the election result was that Slovaks had backed a dangerous, Putin-friendly enemy of Ukraine. Not only was this result thoroughly unwelcome to most other EU governments, but the timing made it doubly awkward, with the growing realisation that Ukraine’s much-heralded spring and summer counteroffensive has fallen short, and reports that some Western countries at least are running short of ammunition and other supplies to send to Ukraine.

Many of the same considerations feed into the elections in Poland, although here it is the re-election of the Law and Justice Party, rather than victory for the opposition Civic Coalition, that is both more likely, according to the latest polls, and would spell the worse outcome in terms of support for Ukraine and relations with Brussels. There are longstanding complaints from opposition parties about how Law and Justice has used its time in power to stack not only the justice system but the electoral system, in its favour. But an opposition win cannot be wholly excluded.

That said, it is worth pausing to register some facts that make the election result in Slovakia and whatever happens in Poland rather more complex than it might at first appear. First, Slovakia may be a frontline state so far as the Ukraine war is concerned – but with a population of 5 million, it is a small country in European, let alone global, terms.

Second, Fico and his Smer party may have won more votes than anyone else, but their tally was just 23 per cent, so 77 per cent of those who voted supported someone else. With hindsight, the hopes for opposition parties may have been inflated by outside wishful thinking; Smer topped the poll with a clear margin; the next largest party took 18 per cent. But the reality is that Slovakia will end up with a coalition.

And this means that what is seen – too simplistically perhaps – as Fico’s anti-Ukraine, pro-Russia platform, is likely to be watered down at least to an extent by the constraints of sharing power; 23 per cent is a long way even from a simple majority of 51 per cent.

And a third problem for Fico and Slovakia is that the economy is in difficulty; his government will be in no position to shun or defy Brussels, even if it wanted to.

Many of these same caveats would apply in Poland. Even if Law and Justice regains power, it is likely to be in coalition – albeit with a louder voice than Fico may have in his. Civic Coalition, led by veteran pro-EU politician Donald Tusk, is also likely to keep an influential voice, even out of power.

It is also not clear how far the most strident anti-Ukraine statements made by current government ministers, including the prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, might have more to do with electioneering than with post-election policy. That includes both the ban (now diluted) on imports of cheap Ukraine grain and the summary halt of military supplies to Kyiv. Ill-feeling between Warsaw and Kyiv will inevitably remain, but would a re-elected Law and Justice-led government really reverse its erstwhile support for Ukraine to this extent?

If it does, this would clearly be more significant than any turn against Ukraine in Slovakia. Poland has the fifth-largest population in the EU; it was once as fiercely supportive of Ukraine as Boris Johnson and presented itself as the pro-Ukraine leader in Europe. For Poland to cool so radically towards Kyiv would punch quite a hole in EU unity. Warsaw could also present itself as leading a central European bloc, consisting also of Slovakia and Hungary, lobbying for a policy shift on Ukraine.

Once upon a time, it would have been the French, Germans and Italians who would have been most likely to “wobble” over support for Ukraine. Now, Germany has overtaken the UK as the prime European supplier of arms, and President Macron of France has stopped talking – in public at least – about not humiliating Russia.

But how might a weakening of support among Ukraine’s once most enthusiastic supporters – a shift, moreover, clothed in an electoral mandate – influence governments and public opinion elsewhere in the EU? Might it presage a fragmentation of EU solidarity with Kyiv? Could it be reversed or neutralised by cash incentives from Brussels? Or is Slovakia the canary in the coal mine, evidence of growing war fatigue all over Europe?

Until now, the EU as a group has surprised itself by the extent to which it has held firm. Its foreign ministers recently went to Kyiv en masse in an eloquent demonstration of support – both for Ukraine in its war against Russia and as a token of its future accession to the EU.

But if the vote in Poland makes Slovakia look more like a trendsetter than an outlier, other countries might well ask why they should be bearing the brunt of support for Ukraine, if those who had shouted loudest after the Russian invasion were now turning away. It is a reasonable bet that diplomatic discussions are going on right now behind very tightly closed doors in an effort to limit the potential damage.