Former British Defense Minister Michael Fallon on Thursday urged the European Union (EU) and NATO to “urgently” speed up Ukraine’s accession to help the economy by facilitating trade and access to financial support.
“We need to think more urgently about what can be done to strengthen the Ukrainian economy in the medium and long term. It is not enough for the EU to agree to let Ukraine be a candidate if it means 10-15 years of chapter-by-chapter negotiations until it can finally join,” he criticized.
Fallon added that “it is equally useless for an exclusive club like NATO to say that one day [a Ucrânia] could come together and arrange some form of preliminary partnership.”
“Both clubs must open their doors, just as Poland opened its doors to Ukrainian refugees. We need to encourage the EU to start a dynamic accession process now to open borders to Ukrainian trade and dismantle tariffs and regulations to integrate Ukraine faster to allow Ukraine access to credit institutions such as the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development,” he added.
The politician, who left the British parliament in 2019, was speaking at a debate organized in London by the Institute of Oriental Studies Foundation, organizers of the Economic Forum in Karpacz, Poland, and New Europeans International, about the challenges facing the Ukrainian economy.
Fallon claimed that in 2014 the then coalition government between David Cameron’s Conservative Party and Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats prevented him from supplying weapons to Ukraine when Russia illegally annexed Crimea.
Even so, he claimed in early 2015 a training program for Ukrainian soldiers by the United Kingdom, which is still ongoing, and the shipment of military material in early 2022, before the invasion on February 24.
According to the former minister, who was responsible for the Defense portfolio between 2014 and 2017, “there are a number of things that can be done now and that our politicians can do now”, namely the reinforcement of anti-aircraft defense, until now ” done sporadically and dropper”.
“We need to better coordinate the supply of weapons that Ukraine needs to stop the onslaught of missiles from Russia” and protect infrastructure such as power plants, hospitals, as this will directly affect the civilian population, he warned.
Fallon also urged the implementation “in the coming weeks and months” of the financial commitments made by the international community for Ukraine to continue paying salaries, pensions and social support, and the extension and reinforcement of international sanctions, in particular, to the system Russian financier. .
Also present, the Ukrainian deputy Oleksiy Goncharenko praised the United Kingdom and Poland for having shown themselves “the best friends, the most active in supporting and the most intelligent to understand what was happening in the face of the risk of Russian tyranny and brutal war for the rest of the world”.
“Today, it is clear that Ukraine is winning, the question is when the war will end. Our goal is to end the war as quickly as possible,” she said, identifying the lack of weapons as the main obstacle.
Goncharenko said Western countries should stop hesitating to provide long-range missiles, fighter jets and tanks because “the humanitarian situation is getting worse” and on the verge of becoming a “catastrophe.”
Source: TSF
