Are the cracks beginning to show in Europe’s support of Ukraine?

The bloc’s united front is beginning to look less united, writes Mary Dejevsky. Slovakia’s new leader has pledged to withdraw support to the country, and Poland may be close behind

Robert Fico, Slovakia’s new leader, spearheaded his party’s election campaign with pledges to end all military support for Ukraine (AP)

Among Ukraine’s Western allies there was a widespread, but mostly unspoken, belief that if ever moral and military support for Kyiv started to crack, the weakest link could prove to be the United States.

Early skirmishing in the presidential election campaign had placed support for Ukraine in the spotlight; advocates for a swift end to the war had a prominent spokesman in Donald Trump, and the welcome for President Zelensky in Washington, where he visited last month after attending the UN General Assembly, seemed a good deal less effusive than before. The congressional compromise that averted a government shutdown only seemed to prove the point, in that it excluded President Biden’s multimillion-dollar aid package for Ukraine, if only temporarily.

As it transpires, however, it is not the United States that has turned out to be the weakest link but Slovakia, a neighbour of Ukraine and hitherto one of Kyiv’s most ardent allies. And Slovakia could be followed by Poland, making two of what might be called frontline states in the Ukraine war – and two of the hitherto most enthusiastic supporters of Kyiv and most die-hard adversaries of Russia – responsible for opening the first significant breaches in European, and Western, solidarity.