The two-day meeting of NATO foreign ministers ended with the organization’s secretary general committing to host nations, and the US Secretary of State condemned Vladimir Putin’s “fire and cholera” strategy of infecting civilians. fall. While Moscow claims the seizure of villages near Bakhmut, in the Donbass, the European Commission wants to move forward with a special court for Russian crimes.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called for more support for “countries under Russian pressure” Georgia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Moldova as soon as possible. “If there is a lesson to be learned from Ukraine, it is that we should support them now,” the Norwegian said at the end of the work of the heads of diplomacy of the 30 members, plus the countries mentioned, as well as the representatives from Finland and Sweden, which await the ratification of Turkey and Hungary to join as full members of the military alliance.
Speaking to Reuters, Estonian minister Urmas Reinsalu said that “the monster also wants to take control of the Western Balkans,” a recent designation that includes Albania, Bosnia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo and refers to Moscow’s influence. the region.
Regarding Ukraine, which received a letter of support and the announcement of renewed offers from Germany and the United States on the first day of work, Stoltenberg again spoke of NATO membership, but after saying the day before that the allies were “helping Ukraine” . to move towards membership,” modulated the terms.
Jens Stoltenberg said that “there is a lot between nothing and full membership”, defending a closer relationship between NATO and Ukraine.
“The most immediate and urgent task is to ensure that Ukraine succeeds as a sovereign and independent democratic nation in Europe,” he began by saying. “The Allies have made it clear that they are ready to provide support with advanced military equipment, ammunition, fuel and anything else they need to defend themselves. This is the urgent, immediate and most important task for the Allies,” continued he. . “Then we also need to understand that there is a lot between nothing and full membership, which means developing an ever closer partnership, both the political partnership and the operational partnership with Ukraine,” he concluded.
With Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba calling for urgency, especially in airspace defense and power system equipment, much was said about the possibility of Kyiv getting the Patriot system. Coming out of a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Kuleba said in vague terms that he had received “a series of new commitments” regarding weapons, transformers and generators, refusing to say whether the Patriots will be on that list . Eventually, however, he showed an interest in the German anti-missile system. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reportedly offered patriots to Poland, but Warsaw rejected this, proposing to go to Ukraine. “We are ready to operate them in the safest and most efficient way possible,” said Kuleba.
The Russian response was swift. “If, as Stoltenberg suggested, NATO supplies the Kiev zealots with Patriot systems along with NATO personnel, they will immediately become a legitimate target of our armed forces,” threatened former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. On the ground, Russian troops, involved in trench warfare in Bakhmut, claim to have captured three villages around them. Kiev has not yet recognized this Russian advance into an area that inflicts heavy casualties on both belligerents.
At the same time, the president of the European Commission has proposed using the Russian assets she has frozen to help compensate Ukraine for the damage inflicted by Moscow, and has proposed creating a court to try “Russia’s crime of aggression”. work in parallel with the TPI. Ursula von der Leyen estimated the damage at 600 billion and recalled that the EU blocked 300 billion from the reserves of the Russian Central Bank and 19 billion from the oligarchs.
Source: DN
