Borrell: Russia Has Achieved Virtually No Progress on Battlefield

European Union (EU) High Representative said that Russia has achieved virtually no progress on battlefield, adding that it is suffering a lot of casualties.

Here's a full extract of his press remarks following Foreign Ministers (FMs) meeting in Brussels.

"Thank you to all of you.

It has been – as I told you at the beginning, at 8:00 in the morning - a very intense [Foreign Affairs] Council, with only two points on the agenda – well, only two main points on the agenda – but with a high number of high-level guests.

As always, we started with Ukraine – which is and remains a top priority for us in front of the Russian continued aggression against Ukraine, which is also a threat for the security in Europe.

As always, we had an update from [Ukrainian] Foreign Minister [Dmytro] Kuleba via video conference on the latest developments.

To summarise, Russia has achieved virtually no progress on the battlefield, suffering a lot of casualties. Putin, ahead of his planned re-election in March – you can guess about the results of this election - continues attacking with drones and missiles. But Ukraine is also achieving important military successes, notably in the Black Sea, where the Russian fleet has been obliged to withdraw to the Eastern facade of Crimea in order to escape the Ukrainian missiles.

The ministers agreed that this is not the moment to weaken our support to Ukraine.

By the contrary: it is the moment to do more and faster, my preferred words: more and faster. With financial resources, with military equipment, by training soldiers, and all [that] Ukrainians need to defend [themselves].

We will continue working to make a predictable assistance. I will travel to Ukraine in the first or second week of February – I will tell you.

We will - I hope - reach an agreement on a top-up of €5 billion of the European Peace Facility, so that we can establish a “Ukraine Assistance Fund”. We presented a non-paper in order to make clear to the Member States how the European Peace Facility will work in this new stage, in this new moment. I hope that it will be ready, and all Ministers considered that it was a good basis to review the work of the European Peace Facility under the ‘Ukraine Assistance Fund’.

On the Immobilised Russian assets, I think I can say that we have a political agreement to finalise work on the basis of the proposal that we tabled in December, focusing on the revenues. For the time being, it is about revenues, about the windfall profits, and I am almost sure that this will be finalised soon. Discussions will continue at the level of Ambassadors, but I see that the agreement is coming. And I make a strong push for this decision to be taken before the next Foreign Affairs Council.

This is about the Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Then, we went to the Middle East. We had separate discussions with the Foreign Ministers of Israel [Israel Katz], with Arab partners, and with the Foreign Minister of Palestine [Riyad Al-Maliki].

The most important thing was the situation in Gaza. Everybody agreed that the death toll among civilians is excessive, that the situation is as very dire as you could imagine, with wide-spread hunger, and a serious lack of humanitarian deliveries and access, apart from the Israeli hostages being held for over 100 days.

I think that more death, more destruction, more hardship for the Gazan people, for the Palestinian people will not help defeat Hamas and its ideology. It will not bring more security to Israel, on the contrary. And that is why we need to double our efforts with international partners to move from this deadly confrontation towards a solution.

We also talked about the situation in the West Bank and the border with Lebanon.

Then, we had separate exchanges with the Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians, and the Arab League.

It is important that we all agree on supporting UNRWA. It was a clear message. We support UNRWA and we do not agree with the criticism expressed by several Israeli governmental sources criticising the UNRWA’s work. On the contrary, we support them, and I personally want to pay homage the more than 140 staff members of UNRWA that have been killed in Gaza.

We talked about the ‘post war’ Gaza and our joint efforts to revive the political process towards a Two-state solution.

We talked about the preparatory work for the Peace Conference.

Finally, we had a discussion with the Palestinian Foreign Minister. We reiterated the support [of the European Union] to the Palestinian Authority. Finally, at the end of the year, we made the payment of the contribution to the work of the Palestinian Authority.

I have to recall that we are the strongest supporter of the Palestinian Authority, from a financial point of view. We are the largest international donor to the Palestinians, and we will continue being so.

Finally, I shared with the Member States for our internal discussion a comprehensive approach to re-initiate the peace process, building on the efforts that we had already engaged [in] with our partners in September in New York, some weeks before the dramatic day of the 7th of October.

This was a successful meeting, and building on this initiative, I have been proposing the way towards a Preparatory Peace Conference, to address this conflict in a comprehensive manner.

It is clear that today the urgency, the priority, the thing in which we have to invest all our energy is on the humanitarian side of the problem. Less than 100 trucks every day – this is unacceptable. Many Member States told directly to the Israeli Minister: “You have to provide a quicker entrance of trucks to provide humanitarian support to the people in Gaza.” Less than 100 [trucks] - 80 one day, maybe – when before the war, there were more 500 [trucks] a day.

This is the urgency and when we talk about the future, it does not mean that we do not understand which is the priority today: the priority is to provide support to the people who are in an extremely dire situation. The priority is to try to stop the military activities, stop the bombing, in order to provide more humanitarian assistance and to free the hostages and to avoid more civilian casualties. This has been clearly said to all our interlocutors today and in particular, to the Israeli Minister. I think there was a clear unanimity on that among Member States.

But it should not prevent us to work on the long run, on the medium-term, but starting now, on the preparation for a Peace Conference as the European Council agreed, to address the conflict and the root causes and look for a stable solution.

The urgency is the priority, but it as important to think about how this problem can be solved. Otherwise, as I said many times, we will go for another cycle of violence, from funeral to funeral, from generation to generation.

And this is the work that we have started with an initial draft for a peace plan. This will have to provide robust security assurances for Israel and for the future State of Palestine.

On the other hand, we continue working on the sanctions against extremist and violent settlers in the West Bank under the EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime. Work is ongoing in the technical working groups. I hope it will be approved by Member States soon.

The Red Sea was high in our discussions. We agreed in principle to establish an EU maritime security operation, and discussed the various options of this mission that I proposed to the Member States. Now, we need to move towards unanimity to see when we can establish this mission.

In general, the rise of violence in the Middle East and South Asia that has caused a great number of civilian casualties, including [in] Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Iran are of utmost concern as they violate the sovereignty of these countries and have a destabilising effect in the region.

We have to remark that there are [civilian] victims, and among them there are European citizens which have also been affected in Gaza and in different attacks in the region, including a small child, killed in Erbil last week.

That is why, we urge all the actors in the region to exert restraint and to work towards de-escalation. But certainly, you can imagine when one sees that the attacks are wide spreading in the region and now, they affect a lot of countries - including Pakistan, including Kurdistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran - our concern increases. That is why today, we have been asking all our interlocutors to try to stop this widespread of violence in the region.

Finally, we exchanged on Azerbaijan and Armenia.

We expressed solidarity with France - their diplomats have been expelled - and we agreed that Azerbaijan needs to return to substantive peace and normalisation talks with Armenia. The latest territorial claims by President [of Azerbaijan, Ilham] Aliyev are very concerning. And any violation of Armenia’s territorial integrity will be unacceptable and will have severe consequences for our relations with Azerbaijan."

All and all, this is the summary of a long Foreign Affairs Council.