The Spanish Defense Minister, Margarita Robles, assured this Sunday that troops from NATO countries, including Spain, will not participate in the war in Ukraine.
In response to warnings from government partner Podemos that escalating the war could lead to sending Spanish troops to Ukraine, Robles was forceful.
“This is an absolutely impossible scenario, it does not exist. Spanish soldiers would only intervene if there was an aggression against a NATO country,” he said in an interview with the newspaper La Vanguardia, quoted by the Spanish news agency EFE.
“Never, never will any troops from a NATO country, and Spain is one of them, participate in the war in Ukraine. Never, never. I want to say it very clearly, very clearly,” he insisted.
Robles invoked Article 5 of the NATO treaty (acronym in English for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with 30 members, including Portugal) to stress that “a member country only intervenes if another member country is attacked and asks for help.”
“Before speaking, it is necessary to know the NATO treaty,” he said.
Regarding the Leopard tanks that Spain has out of service, Robles said that “during the years of the Popular Party government, very little was invested in defense” and said that the tanks in question are being repaired.
He said he hopes the repairs will finish soon so they can join a battalion with tanks donated by other countries.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military who will operate the tanks, as well as those responsible for maintaining the German-made equipment, are being trained.
“I would like to point out that the leopards have only one goal: defense, never aggression against Russia,” he said.
The Spanish minister regretted that “a very bloody spring” is expected in Ukraine, with the possibility of new offensives by both sides, and stated that it is not just a war between armies, but against Ukrainian civilians.
“They are being slaughtered,” he said.
The number of civilian and military casualties from the conflict is unknown, but several sources, including the UN, have admitted that it will be high.
At the end of last week, the UN had confirmed the death of 8,006 civilians and the existence of 13,287 wounded.
Robles was skeptical about possible peace negotiations, considering that Russian leader Vladimir Putin “has made it very clear, without any doubt, that he wants to continue this war.”
He said he still does not have data to predict whether the conflict will result in a nuclear war, but said he believes it will not reach a “terribly dramatic point for humanity.”
Putin ordered the invasion on February 24, 2022 to “demilitarize and denazify” the neighboring country.
The “special military operation”, as Moscow calls it, triggered a full-scale war that plunged Europe into what is considered the most serious security crisis since World War II (1939-1945).
Ukraine’s Western allies marked the first anniversary of the war on Friday by announcing more military support for kyiv and new sanctions against Moscow.
Source: TSF
