Donald Trump’s phone call with Vladimir Putin earlier this week – during which the US president promised his Russian counterpart “massive amounts of jobs and wealth” once the war in Ukraine ends – prompted a predictably mealy-mouthed response from European leaders.
“I want to thank President Trump for his tireless efforts to bring a ceasefire to Ukraine,” Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X. “It’s important that the US stays engaged. We will continue to support Volodymyr Zelenskyy to achieve lasting peace in Ukraine.”
There is something profoundly pathetic – deeply disturbing – about the EU’s top official thanking a US leader for directly undermining the bloc’s plan to end the most brutal war on European soil in nearly a century. (Just days earlier, von der Leyen had vowed to “keep the pressure high” on Moscow until it agrees to a ceasefire.)
Is silence assent?
Von der Leyen’s comments, however, were also revealing in what they didn’t say.
In particular, her refusal to condemn Trump’s claim that Kyiv could be a “great beneficiary” of US trade only compounds fears that, once the war ends, the EU will stand aside while the Trump administration plunders the country in broad daylight.
One major – and relatively under-reported – illustration of this is Ukraine’s ongoing negotiations with holders of its so-called “GDP warrants,” or bonds that offer payouts linked to economic growth.
The owners of these bonds, which include major US hedge funds Aurelius Capital Management and VR Capital Group and are indexed to Kyiv’s economic performance in 2023, are currently demanding that Kyiv pay out $600 million by the end of this month, on account of the fact that Ukraine’s economy grew by more than 3% two years ago.
Kyiv, understandably, argues that it shouldn’t pay the full amount since its “stellar” growth that year was due to its economy having contracted by almost 30% following Moscow’s invasion in 2022.
Ukraine’s argument is also staunchly supported by debt justice campaigners and independent analysts.
“These warrants were created in 2015 under completely different macroeconomic conditions, which differ fundamentally from today’s realities,” said Bohdan Slutskyi, an economist at the Centre for Economic Strategy, a Kyiv-based think tank.
Source: Euractiv.
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