Brussels 19.02.2023 “Our security is being challenged by the war in Ukraine. This is what I told yesterday the Chinese [State Councillor Wang Yi]. We are arming Ukraine because this war is a challenge for our security. It is an existential challenge for Europe. But I’m not going to be rhetoric and will go to the point but President of [Ukraine Volodymy] Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians have a lot of applauds and not enough ammunitions. That’s the paradox: they need to get less applauds and more arm supplies” said the EU top diplomat Josep Borrell, while addressing Munich Security Conference.

“Ukrainians are fighting, paying the highest price in terms of lives but this war happens in the European soil, affects us and has a global impact around the world which also affects our security” he continued. “So let’s talk about this short term, long term, our neighbourhood and the wider world”.

I think that we face three major challenges:

“First, our credibility as a global player: this is what we call geopolitical Europe;
Second, our strategic responsibility as security and defence provider;
And third our engagement with partners around the world and to preserve or even to re-build trustful cooperation with many of the so-called Global South.

“President of [France Emmanuel] Macron said about that, that he was surprised by the big resentment that he perceived in many countries around the world. And I share this feeling.

“When I took office in 2019, we started talking about a geopolitical Europe, to use the language of power, Europe is in danger [what I had said when I presented the Strategic Compass]. Many wondered if this was not just a slogan, an exaggeration in order to better sell the product”.

“Unhappily, the war in Ukraine has converted this slogan into a reality. A dramatic reality. And it has made us grow up, wake up”.

“And brought us to a kind of adulthood. We have rediscovered the brutality of the interstate war in our world order and we are becoming an actor, credible, capable of using coercion against those who threaten us.

“As I said, Russia is threatening our security and we are using coercion. We are becoming a hard power”.

In contrast to the EU diplomat, Chinese delegate at the Conference Wang Yi, director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, Saturday reiterated China’s stance on peaceful development and called for mutual trust to promote a safer world.

Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, made his remarks at this year’s Munich Security Conference (MSC), an international platform for discussions on global security issues.

“Standing at a critical juncture of history, human society must not repeat path of antagonism, division and confrontation, and must not fall into the trap of zero-sum game, war and conflict,” he said in his speech.