A-Infos (en) Italy, UCADI #199 - WE WILL PAY DEARLY, WE WILL PAY EVERYTHING (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The European Union is preparing its budget for next year, but the 
coffers are empty: the war in Ukraine is like a drain pump swallowing up 
all available resources. As is well known, Trump has decided that 
Europeans should pay the costs of the war, and has therefore imposed a 
cash flow whereby NATO receives contributions from European countries 
for its operations and with these resources purchases from the Americans 
the weapons Ukraine needs to continue the massacre of its own people. 
But the cost of weapons isn't the only problem: the Union will also have 
to continue paying for the day-to-day functioning of the Ukrainian 
state, which, as is well known, is a failed state, lacking its own 
budget and must draw all its needs from the European Union to provide 
activities and services to its citizens. But there's more: Ukraine is 
notoriously one of the most corrupt states in the world, and therefore a 
large portion of its funding ends up in bribes, profited by a 
bureaucracy and oligarchy that permeates the entire functioning of what 
remains of the state apparatus. The war has provided the regime's 
orichalks with an opportunity to immeasurably increase their fortunes 
and accumulate capital: just look at the luxurious villas in the Bay of 
Kotor, inhabited by the children of Ukrainian oligarchs who fled the war 
and are enjoying the war profits after evading compulsory military 
service by paying bribes to recruiters. Nor do the costs of maintaining 
Ukraine stop there, because the European Union also covers the 
compensation paid to Ukrainian refugees scattered across Europe. This 
financial support is sparking resentment and hatred among the indigenous 
populations, who view Ukrainian refugees as privileged individuals 
living off subsidies, clogging up public services and healthcare, 
crippling the rental housing market, and hindering the well-being of 
tax-paying European citizens.
As if that weren't enough, Ukrainian goods passing through the European 
Union without duties are sold below cost, effectively dumping goods, 
especially agricultural products, from within the European area. This is 
demonstrated by the repeated protests by farmers in various European 
countries.
With the drafting of the new European budget, one could say that insult 
is being added to injury. Having to scrape the bottom of the barrel, the 
drafters of the EU budget will necessarily have to reduce the resources 
allocated to agriculture, which constitute a full 30% of the European 
budget, in order to raise funds. Another sacrificed item will be that 
relating to cohesion funds, with significant damage to the poorest and 
most disadvantaged areas of the Union.
To make these highly discriminatory measures palatable to the European 
population, the myth of Ukraine's reconstruction as a business 
opportunity is being fueled, although one wonders for whom and for what, 
given that the country requiring reconstruction is riddled with bombs, 
polluted, deprived of natural resources, and excessively indebted.
There's enough to stop the rhetoric of solidarity with an attacked 
country, a "democratic" country that deserves aid and support, when 
we're faced with an oligarchic regime no more and no less similar to the 
Russian one that Ukraine is fighting, an enemy of all political, 
religious, linguistic, and ethnic freedoms: a country governed by a 
regime that forcibly forces its citizens to take up arms, kidnaps them, 
throwing them into the trenches to die under Russian artillery fire, a 
country dominated and run by corrupt individuals (the population says 
so, protesting in Russian).
It's in the primary interest of Europe's working classes to oppose the 
war in Ukraine, because it drains resources from the European welfare 
system and creates the conditions for a profound economic crisis that 
will disrupt the productive structure of the entire Europe, triggering 
an economic recession that hits the proletariat. The European Union 
cannot shoulder the costs of either the war or the reconstruction of 
Ukraine; It's worth remembering that the country ceded its energy and 
mineral resources to the US and lost much of them because they were 
located in oblasts that came under Russian control. The know-how 
Ukrainians acquired during the war to develop their economy and rebuild 
the country is not enough to compensate for the profound destruction of 
the economic fabric or the devastation caused by the war on the social 
fabric. The governments and peoples of the EU must do everything they 
can to prevent Ukraine from being granted EU membership, using a 
preferential path compared to that of other countries that have long 
been working and pushing for their own accession to the Union, but whose 
applications have been rejected, only to see Ukraine given priority in 
their requests for geostrategic reasons.
It is indisputable that Ukraine does not meet any of the requirements 
set out in the Treaties for EU membership, therefore its admission to 
the Union constitutes an unacceptable political coercion that violates 
the agreements signed. Furthermore, its presence in the Union would end 
up absorbing the majority of available common resources, which would be 
channeled and used to pay war reparations, which the European Union is 
effectively being asked to pay. This is especially true given that 
Ukraine lost the war and that no country will pay for war reparations 
other than the Ukrainians themselves and those incompetent leaders of 
European Union countries who support their war against their interests. 
For these reasons, opposition to the war in Ukraine is vital to the 
interests of the European proletariat, which, to defend its living 
conditions and level of well-being, must free itself from the Ukrainian 
problem as quickly as possible through direct negotiations with Russia. 
This requires a recognition of the same principles that are part of the 
European Union's corpus, including the protection of minority freedoms, 
the guarantee that peoples can speak the language they wish, and the 
principle of self-determination. The peoples of Europe cannot sacrifice 
their well-being and prosperity to fuel Ukrainian nationalism and the 
Slavic revivalism of a Nazi-like segment of the Ukrainian population, 
sacrificing their own interests and well-being to this end.

G.L.

https://www.ucadi.org/2025/07/27/pagheremo-caro-pagheremo-tutto
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