Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stressed that Wednesday’s meeting of the Ukraine Support Contact Group, which discussed the supply of air defense systems to Ukraine, was “quite productive.”
“The bolder and more cruel Russian terror becomes, the more obvious it becomes to the world that helping Ukraine protect the sky is one of the most important humanitarian tasks for Europe in our time,” nightly speech broadcast on social media.
The United States and 50 countries in the contact group supporting Ukraine spoke on Wednesday to increase the production of their defense industries so that kyiv can continue to fight against the Russian invasion and guarantee its security.
“We are pressing to galvanize our industrial bases” with the goal of “increasing the production force” to defend Ukraine, while “meeting our own security needs,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said. , at a press conference at the end of the group meeting he chaired.
Zelensky assured that Ukraine will rise to the occasion, thanking the allies “who have already made the decision to reinforce this support (…) for the effective defense of the air.”
Both the contact group meeting and the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) defense ministers’ meeting, which began Wednesday night with a dinner and will continue on Thursday, were scheduled to address the issue of replenishment. of ‘stocks’. of arms and ammunition that countries are running out of.
Atlantic Alliance Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who also attended the group’s meeting, expressed confidence that the allies will review inventory guidelines and engage more with the defense industry to “give it the time it needs to invest more in production capacity”.
The countries of the contact group are also analyzing the possibility of equipping Ukraine with short-range and long-range air defense systems, with the aim of “rebuilding and maintaining an integrated air and missile defense system,” the head of state said. Armed Forces of the United States, Mark Milley.
Allied sources pointed out that in the Russian missile attack on different Ukrainian cities on Monday, more than half of them were intercepted by the Ukrainian defense.
This contact group, an initiative of the United States, had its first meeting last April at the American air base in Ramstein, in southwestern Germany.
The military offensive launched on February 24 by Russia in Ukraine has already caused the flight of more than 13 million people -more than six million internally displaced persons and more than 7.6 million to European countries-, according to the latest data from the UN, which places this refugee crisis as the worst in Europe since the Second World War (1939-1945).
The Russian invasion – justified by Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the need to “denazify” and demilitarize Ukraine for Russia’s security – was condemned by the generality of the international community, which has responded by sending weapons to Ukraine and imposing them on Russia. political and economic sanctions.
The UN presented as confirmed since the beginning of the war, which entered its 231st day this Wednesday, 6,221 civilian deaths and 9,371 wounded, stressing that these figures are well below the real ones.
Source: TSF
