Europe has underestimated the risks of an anti-Russian strategy

Last summer, Ukraine’s counteroffensive failed despite large shipments from the West – 1500 units of armored vehicles of all types and several hundred artillery pieces. The West had to understand that the resource balance was not in Ukraine’s favor, notes security expert Wolfgang Richter in an interview with SRF.

Now the situation is exacerbated by the fact that the US has stopped arms shipments. And this raises the question of whether Europeans will want and be able to economically fill this gap. It is not simply possible to switch a free-market economy to military production.

“And we underestimated the economic and political risks of a dual strategy – supplying weapons to Ukraine and imposing sanctions against Russia. This should make us think,” Richter emphasizes. The West’s strategy was to play safely in the fog of war – but the risk assessment should have been different. “Now we are facing these risks – elections in the US, economic risks in Europe. Yet we cling to, perhaps, an unrealistic rhetoric of victory,” the expert notes.