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EXPLAINER: Why Europe lacks voice, power in Ukraine crisis

FILE - Liliya, a resident of Donetsk-Severne village in the outskirts of Donetsk, poses next to a wall with written years of living in a basement used as a bomb shelter on the territory controlled by pro-Russian militants not far from the frontline with Ukrainian government forces, eastern Ukraine, Jan. 30, 2022. Liliya and five other people live in a five-storey apartment building without heating and water supply. Many houses were abandoned because of significant damage during military actions in 2014-2015. (AP Photo/Alexei Alexandrov, File) FILE - Lithuania's Minister of National Defense Arvydas Anusauskas speaks during a press conference in front of a Danish Royal Air Force F-16 fighter jet during the welcome ceremony for the reinforcement of the NATO Air Policing Mission at the Siauliai military air force base some 230 km (144 miles) east of the capital Vilnius, Lithuania, Jan. 28, 2022. As tensions build with Russia, NATO is focused on defending its 30 member countries. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis, File) FILE - A convoy of Russian armored vehicles moves along a highway in Crimea, Jan. 18, 2022. Russia has concentrated an estimated 100,000 troops with tanks and other heavy weapons near Ukraine in what the West fears could be a prelude to an invasion. (AP Photo, File) FILE - German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, left, and French President Emmanuel Macron speak with each other during an EU Summit in Brussels, Dec. 17, 2021. European Union leaders discussed during the one-day summit Russia's military threat to neighbouring Ukraine. (Stephanie Lecocq, Pool Photo via AP, file) FILE - Enthusiasts fix a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin to a balloon during celebration of the anniversary of Crimea annexation from Ukraine in 2014, in Sevastopol, Crimea, March 18, 2021. The sign reads "Another gave us back the cradle of baptism. March 18, 2014". (AP Photo, File) FILE - Soldiers carry the flag draped casket of World War I British Private Thomas Edmundson during a re-burial service at Perth Cemetery in Ypres, Belgium, March 14, 2018. In Belgium, bodies of World War I are still being found to this day, testimony to the brutality of four years of fighting in Flanders Fields. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, file) FILE - Wooden crosses and Canadian flags adorn the grave of World War I Canadian soldier Private George Lawrence Price, center, at the St. Symphorien Cemetery near Mons, Belgium, July 26, 2014. Price was recorded as the last Canadian soldier to die on the Western Front during the First World War. Hundreds of troops died on the final morning of World War I, even after an armistice was reached and before it came into force. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File) FILE - Red poppies bloom in front of the World War I Ijzertoren (Yser Tower) Monument in Diksmuide, Belgium, June 17, 2014. In Belgium, where bodies of World War I are still being found in Flanders Fields to this day, the Yser Tower contains an inscription of "No more war", in four languages so no one misses the point. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File) FILE - Red roses are placed on the casket of U.S. Navy sailor Julius Pieper during a reburial service at the Normandy American Cemetery, Colleville-sur-Mer, France, June 19, 2018. The brutality of World War II left an estimated 36.5 million Europeans dead. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File) FILE - A Bosnian militiaman runs for cover in the hills above Sarajevo, May 12, 1992. It was there for all to see when the Balkan war over the split-up of Yugoslavia dominated the 1990s. Former Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jacques Poos boldly declared it was "the hour of Europe," yet it took U.S. led NATO troops to make the difference and the Bosnian war was ended in 1995 with a U.S. brokered deal in the Ohio town of Dayton, not in Europe. (AP Photo/Santiago Lyon, File) FILE - A Ukrainian serviceman, seen through a camouflage mesh, stands at a frontline position in the Luhansk region, eastern Ukraine, Jan. 29, 2022. Few have appetite for war, but major powers prepare and stand ready. Many wealthy Western European nations have fallen short of that mark. Instead they have been sheltering under U.S. cover for decades, counting it will suffice. It is all too obvious in the current standoff over Ukraine and the lack of hard power translates directly into a lack of voice. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File) FILE - A Ukrainian serviceman walks through a trench on the front line in the Luhansk area, eastern Ukraine, Jan. 27, 2022. When some 100,000 Russian troops have closed in on the border of Ukraine over the past weeks, soft power does not seem to pack the necessary deterrence, and it frustrates the European Union to be largely locked out of the diplomatic efforts again, with Russia and the United States taking center stage. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File) FILE - French President Emmanuel Macron, center, speaks with U.S. President Joe Biden, right, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a NATO summit in Brussels, June 14, 2021. France and the United Kingdom are nuclear powers with a might still somewhat redolent of their imperial past. But for all so many nations, defense spending felt like too high a burden as they sought to re-emerge from World War II. (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys, File) FILE - Military vehicles and tanks of Poland, Italy, Canada and United States during the NATO military exercises ''Namejs 2021'' at a training ground in Kadaga, Latvia, Sept. 13, 2021. NATO responded to Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula by bolstering its forces near Russia and conducting drills on the territory of its Baltic members, the maneuvers the Kremlin described at that time as a security threat. (AP Photo/Roman Koksarov, File)