At the Munich security conference this Sunday, the EU’s High Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, called for an acceleration and increase in military aid to Ukraine, saying he was in favor of the country joining the EU.
“We are arming Ukraine because war is a great existential challenge to our security. (President Volodomyr) Zelensky and Ukraine don’t have enough ammunition, but they have enough motivation,” Borrell said in an address to a panel discussion.
“We have to do more and faster, we have to speed up our military aid to Europe,” he said, adding that “all European leaders said (in Munich) that Russia cannot win the war, that Ukraine must win the war. We must win the war. must move from words to deeds”.
In addition to the short-term challenge of increasing and accelerating military aid to Ukraine, Borrell pointed to two medium-term challenges, namely increasing the capacity of the European arms industry and engaging more with the global South.
On the latter, Borrell said he had detected a certain skepticism in some countries about supporting Ukraine, saying that Europe should behave in a way that makes it clear that it defends universal values and not values that are valid only when a European neighbor under attack.
“We see that there is a certain skepticism in Africa… People have memories and feelings. We have to show that we defend universal values and not values that are valid only when Ukraine is attacked,” he said.
In the ensuing panel discussion, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and Swedish counterpart Ulf Kristersson agreed with Borrell on the need to accelerate military aid to Ukraine.
“I was in Kiev recently. Ukrainians tell us: they send us weapons and there is no problem. But they send them too late and too slowly,” Kristersson said.
Kallas, on the other hand, stressed that on the one hand Ukraine needs ammunition and on the other hand the countries supplying them need to replenish their ‘stocks’.
Source: DN
