European leaders rarely tell the truth. So it was rather refreshing – albeit deeply alarming – when Belgium’s prime minister openly admitted what many EU citizens instinctively already knew.

“We have to finance Ukraine, and we’re incapable of delivering the military capacity to actually put an end to the conflict,” Bart De Wever said last week. “So we’re financing a war with no strategy… We don’t have the iron, so we give the gold. But to do what exactly? To keep that war going?”

Judging by this week’s events, Europe’s answer to De Wever’s rhetorical question is a resounding yes.

EU ambassadors this afternoon formally greenlit a €90 billion ‘loan’ to Ukraine – which will probably never be repaid. Diplomats also expect the European Commission to propose its 20th sanctions package on Russia on Friday, with the aim of having it approved by EU capitals by 24 February: the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion.

In other words, the EU’s ‘plan’ – if you can call it that – is to continue to fund (most of) Kyiv’s war effort, whilst hoping (against hope) that the next sanctions package will miraculously achieve what the previous nineteen could not – and bring the Russian bear to its knees.

The scheme is so self-evidently preposterous that it almost seems like political satire. In fact, it’s arguably worse: General Melchett’s “brilliant” plan for winning the Great War in Blackadder involved “doing precisely what we’ve done eighteen times before”, rather than nineteen.

The EU’s strategy also flies in the face of numerous studies demonstrating that, while Western sanctions have inflicted significant damage on Russia’s economy, they are overwhelmingly unlikely to force Vladimir Putin to come crawling to the negotiating table anytime soon.

An analysis published in September by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, for instance, found that Russia is “unfortunately… well-positioned to sustain its current war effort for the foreseeable future”, for “at least” the next two to three years.

Another report released last month by the Royal United Services Institute was even more damning. Entitled “Why Economic Pain Won’t Stop Russia’s War,” it concluded that sanctions have made the Russian elite more dependent on Putin’s regime for political favours, including military contracts and war-related subsidies.

“For many insiders, the continuation of the war is not merely tolerable but materially advantageous,” the study noted. “Loyalty becomes a rational strategy.”

In other words, EU sanctions are not only failing to force Russia to stop the war. They might be making the goal even harder to achieve.

Unfortunately, none of this is likely to alter Brussels policymaking. Indeed, leaders appear stubbornly committed to re-enacting an (unfunny) European political version of Groundhog Day.

Next week leaders will meet with business CEOs in Antwerp to discuss the bloc’s alarming deindustrialisation (again). The day after they will debate the bloc’s “competitiveness” (again), and former Italian premiers Enrico Letta and Mario Draghi will present their 2024 reports on the EU economy (again). And, inevitably, nothing will be done (again).

Once again, it’s hard to know if this behaviour is just crazy – as Einstein noted, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results – or grotesque satire.

“If nothing else works, then a total, pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through,” General Melchett said. The EU, it seems, hasn’t realised this was meant to be a joke.        

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