The Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, urged the allied countries this Tuesday to “do more”, especially increase military aid, so that kyiv arrives with a “strong” position in this possible dialogue with Moscow. A support that does not currently include kyiv’s demand to now enter the Alliance.
“More military aid and fewer discussions about what a peace process would be like (…), we have to put Ukraine in a position of strength for when those discussions come,” Rutte claimed. The Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Andri Sibiga, has announced, for his part, that he will present to his NATO colleagues a list of 19 air defense systems that his country urgently needs to protect key infrastructure under Russian attacks.
In the first of the two days of meeting of foreign ministers of the Alliance in Brussels, with the focus again on the war unleashed by Russia on its eastern flank, but with restless eyes also on the political changes in the west after the victory Donald Trump, the new head of NATO, has explained that he warned him that his country’s security also depends on Ukraine not being weakened. Because that would make Russian President Vladimir Putin and perhaps his allies China, Iran and North Korea feel emboldened and have “ideas” about other territories.
“When we reach an agreement on Ukraine, it has to be a good agreement, because what we cannot allow is that Kim Jong-un, Xi Jinping and anyone else who thinks it is a bad agreement start celebrating it, because that could give them ideas to others about what they can do,” Rutte warned. ”This is crucial for our defense, not only in Europe, but also in the United States and the Indo-Pacific,” he added.
Everything is related, he stressed, and the main thing is that kyiv comes “strong” to a peace process, when the Ukrainians themselves decide that the time has come to negotiate, the Dutchman has stressed several times at a press conference in Brussels. An idea that several ministers have also hammered home, including the German Annalena Baerbock and the Spanish José Manuel Albares. “Today, more than ever, it is essential to continue standing by Ukraine (…) for as long as necessary,” stressed Albares, for whom, in any case, Russia, for now, does not show “any will to negotiate, it is political fiction.” ”.
Rutte has welcomed actions made in recent days by several countries, including Germany, whose chancellor, the social democrat Olaf Scholz, announced on Monday in kyiv that Berlin will deliver weapons worth 650 million euros to Ukraine this month. Also the United States, whose Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, is participating in the Brussels meeting, announced on Monday a new delivery of military aid to kyiv for 725 million dollars (about 690 million euros). Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania and Norway have also announced new games, something that Rutte welcomed and encouraged to continue.
“This is excellent news (…), but we all have to do more, especially now,” Rutte declared. “The stronger our military support for Ukraine now, the stronger their hand will be at the negotiating table and the sooner we can put an end to Russian aggression in Ukraine once and for all,” he added.
Doubts around Trump
The new NATO meeting is held under the shadow of pessimism and uncertainty. On the one hand, doubts continue about when he takes office at the end of January. As a candidate, he assured that he would resolve the war “in 24 hours,” but allied countries, especially European ones, trust that the language will change now that he is preparing to return to the White House. Hence the insistence, Rutte explained, on making him see that the implications of the war go far beyond Ukraine and could affect Washington. The Democrat Blinken has assured Rutte that he will work “until the last minute, until the last day” before the transfer of command, on January 20, alongside NATO and Ukraine, although it is clear that all allies are already thinking about the day after Trump’s inauguration.
But doubts are also growing regarding the direction of the war in Ukraine, with a battlefield dominated at least at the moment by Russia despite the high human cost – NATO estimates that it is suffering up to 1,500 casualties a month on the front – and a Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who has begun to insistently warn that he needs the NATO umbrella to have a strong position in future negotiations.
In an interview on Britain’s Sky News on Saturday, Zelensky said a ceasefire can be negotiated if the Atlantic Alliance accepts the regions of free Ukraine as part of the organization, with the prospect of recovering the rest of the territory by diplomatic route later. It is what some in the Alliance call the “German way”, in reference to the fact that in 1955 only the western part of Germany joined NATO, and decades later the rest, after the fall of the wall and reunification.
“Inviting Ukraine now to join NATO will be an effective counterweight to Russian blackmail and will deprive the Kremlin of its illusions about the possibility of hindering Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic integration,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reiterated this Tuesday. “We need strong historic decisions instead of calls to Putin or visits to Moscow,” Sibiga stated from Brussels, in reference to Scholz’s recent conversation with the Russian president, or the visit to Moscow of the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, in summer. But this possibility runs into firm opposition from key countries such as the United States or even Germany, so discussions in this regard do not seem to be going anywhere at the moment. “There is no consensus at this time on this,” diplomatic sources acknowledge.
The two-day ministerial meeting at NATO headquarters opened with a meeting with the King of Jordan, Abdullah II. A sign, Rutte said, of the Alliance’s willingness to expand its ties in other regions of the world, especially towards its southern neighbors. Something especially pressing, he has indicated, given the growing influence of Russia and China in regions such as the African continent and the Middle East.
“We have to be active, we cannot have a situation in which the Chinese and Russians are involved in Africa and other regions and the West is not. We have to build bilateral relations and help when necessary, as we do with the Iraq mission,” he indicated. The plan to open a liaison office in Amman “soon” goes in the same direction, an issue that will be detailed in the Brussels meeting with the Jordanian monarch. Spain has announced that it will allocate half a million euros to “strengthen Jordan’s capabilities” and another half million for “a first-rate strategic partner for Spain” such as Mauritania. “The needs of the southern neighborhood count for Spain,” he stated.
