| For many observers, Monday’s pictures of EU foreign ministers in Kyiv drove home the message that Europeans have made a clear choice: Europe’s support for Ukraine remains steadfast despite emerging doubts. Now, it is just a matter of sticking to their guns. The EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell could not have been clearer when he called Russia’s war on Ukraine an “existential threat for Europe.” Others were quick to follow suit. “Ukraine’s future lies in the European Union, our community of freedom, and it will soon stretch from Lisbon to Luhansk,” Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said, referring to Ukraine’s easternmost regional capital, occupied by Russia since 2014. “It [Ukraine] also broadens its path to the EU with every village, every metre that it liberates, and every metre where it rescues its people, it is also paving its way to the European Union,” she added. It was an exceptionally clear statement for a German official, especially as some of her predecessors frequently used to reminisce about a political and economic space “from Lisbon to Vladivostok”. But Russia’s war on Ukraine has drastically redrawn the lines and probably become a point of no return on many different levels, from economy and energy to geopolitics. Still, despite the message of unity the meeting in the war-torn country was supposed to send, declarations of support alone are no longer enough. | 