NATO member countries gathered in Bucharest on Tuesday mobilized to help Ukraine get through the winter, with the expected announcement of a “substantial” financial contribution from Washington to deal with the damage caused by Russia to energy infrastructure. from kyiv.
Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to use winter as a “weapon of war” against Ukraine with “deliberate attacks” on civilian infrastructure to deprive the country of heat, electricity and water, denounced the Secretary General of the Atlantic Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg.
The Kremlin’s goal is “to inflict as much suffering as possible on Ukrainian civilians to try to break their commitment, their unity in the fight against the Russian invasion,” he continued, during a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in the Romanian capital. where his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, was also announced.
US “substantial aid”
Germany, which chairs the G7, for its part had convened for Tuesday afternoon a meeting outside of NATO on the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, during which the United States was going to ask the rest of the countries to intensify your help in this area. Arriving in Bucharest on Monday night, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will announce “substantial” financial aid to Ukraine in the energy field by the end of the day, according to senior US officials.
This aid “will be substantial and it is not finished,” one of the top officials told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity, declining to give more details or the exact amount. However, he recalled that the Biden administration had budgeted $1.1 billion for energy in Ukraine and Moldova. The US aid is part of the prospect of an international donor conference in “support for the Ukrainian civil resistance” to be held on December 13 in France.
25-30% of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure damaged
Russia embarked on a campaign of massive missile attacks against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in early October. According to figures cited by the Ukrainian government, between 25 and 30% of this infrastructure was damaged. “What the Russians are doing is specifically targeting high-voltage transformer stations,” not just the power plants themselves, to disrupt the entire energy chain, from generation to distribution, the US official explained.
For the NATO chief, “the message from all of us will be that we must do more” to help Kyiv, including in terms of air defense. “Russia is failing on the battlefield. In response, they go after civilian targets, cities because they cannot gain territory,” he added.
Source: BFM TV
