'As long as it takes' was never a strategy, and Europe is running out of time to prove it stands with Ukraine

It succeeded in uniting Ukraine’s partners under a single slogan, but it offered neither strategy nor clarity. While we debate the need for political will, we often forget that political will cannot exist without clarity.

“As long as it takes” signals an unwillingness to define success — how the war should end, under what conditions, and what Europe is prepared to do to achieve that outcome. Instead, support is presented as open-ended and abstract. This ambiguity feeds public anxiety: at a time of rising costs and domestic pressures, Europeans are asked to commit resources to Ukraine indefinitely, without a clearly defined end point or strategy to reach it.

This vagueness is compounded by a growing gap between wartime language and peacetime decisions. The German Foreign Minister recently reiterated that frozen Russian assets will not be transferred to Ukraine and that the EU will not revisit the option, calling the matter “definitively resolved”. Yet in his New Year’s speech, Friedrich Merz warned that Russia’s aggression is part of a broader plan targeting Europe as a whole. In the UK, Prime Minister Keir Starmer marked the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion by stressing that it is “not a remote conflict a long way away from the United Kingdom.”

What is perplexing is how “Russia is a threat to Europe” and such decisions are meant to coexist. European citizens are expected to feel threatened and prepare for possible war, while governments stop short of decisions that would match the gravity of their own rhetoric. If the danger is as serious as leaders insist, why is Europe unwilling to use Russian assets to confront it?

Over the past year, the conversation has shifted from war to peace. The UK and France have signalled a willingness to deploy troops to Ukraine once peace is secured and internationally recognised borders are guaranteed. Yet these promises are filled with gaps: why Russia would agree to such terms, what is expected to happen in the interim, and who can ensure that any security guarantees would survive changes of government. The United States has already demonstrated that “as long as it takes” carries an expiration date: a change of government is enough to end it.

Political systems do not tolerate such gaps for long. When clarity is absent, it is replaced by propaganda, infiltration, and votes for populists and ideologues who offer certainty where governments hesitate — often amplified by that same propaganda.

Russian information warfare seeks out precisely these weak points and strikes where defences are weakest. It rarely invents issues from scratch; it capitalises on existing debates and unresolved grievances.

UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper noted that Russian disinformation in Europe is not targeted solely at Ukraine. My experience confirms it. It amplifies the most polarising issues in Europe — economic discontent, migration, climate — and intensifies its activity during election cycles, exploiting democratic systems and freedoms to deepen division.

When public debate is already fragmented, broad slogans such as “standing with Ukraine shoulder to shoulder” are not enough.

Every time European leaders declare that Ukraine is “a shield of Europe”, those words must be supported by a strategy that addresses domestic anxieties, explains costs and objectives clearly, and aligns words with action.

Otherwise, the gap between language and policy becomes precisely the space in which hostile narratives thrive.

Europe does not need better slogans. It needs a clear, honest account of why it supports Ukraine, to what end, and with what means.

When language no longer means what it says, commitment becomes fragile — and “as long as it takes” can end far sooner than anyone intends.

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Anastasiia Marushevska is Co-Founder and Executive Director of PR Army and a Contributing Editor at Ukrainer International.

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