“The price we pay as allies is calculated in money, while the price of the Ukrainians is calculated in blood,” says Stoltenberg.
NATO closes ranks with Ukraine at a critical moment in the conflict. The arrival of winter advances a stagnation of the war fronts -in which kyiv has gained advantage with its offensives launched since the beginning of autumn- and military support begins to be more expensive every day and, even, answered within the countries of the Alliance.
Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO, whose mandate at the head of the organization expired in 2022 and which was exceptionally extended by the allies after the Russian invasion, was emphatic this Monday in Madrid during the closing of the General Assembly of the Atlantic Alliance, in which Pedro Sánchez and the Ukrainian president, Volodímir Zelenski, also took part.
«We should not think that democracies cannot temporarily sustain the effort over time. That would be a catastrophe for Ukraine and dangerous for us because the lesson learned would be that with force you can get what you want, “said Stoltemberg as a warning about a war that, everything indicates, still has a long way to go. The Norwegian was even more explicit in assuring that “Putin cannot win.” Whatever the cost, he came to say by way of summary.
Stoltenberg used a mantra that the Atlantic Alliance had been using since long before Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine and Russia was confirmed as a real threat. Each of the NATO countries must allocate 2% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to military spending. “The price we pay as allies – Stoltenberg insisted – is calculated in money, while that of the Ukrainians is calculated in blood.” Along the same lines, the Secretary General of the Alliance recalled that the organization does not exist with unlimited resources and specifically referred to the need to maintain military deployment in NATO countries that may be threatened by Russian expansionism and between which include the three Baltic republics or Poland.
Volodimir Zelensky picked up the glove that Stoltenberg complicitly threw at him. The Ukrainian president closed the Parliamentary Assembly of the Alliance with a message that he has been repeating in each of his international addresses, always by videoconference, which he has maintained since Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of his country on February 24. “Ukraine needs weapons – especially anti-aircraft – and financing to resist the Russian threat,” the president said.
After insisting on the need for his country to urgently join NATO and the European Union, Zelenski assured that kyiv will not accept the slightest decrease in its territory, which implies the recovery of Donbas and the Crimean peninsula, areas annexed by referendums not internationally recognized to the Russian Federation. Not even China, a discreet ally of Moscow, has taken the step of recognizing Moscow’s dominance over those territories. “They will not take a single piece of Ukraine from us,” Zelenski settled before NATO.
The Ukrainian president asked the national parliaments of the members of the Atlantic Alliance to declare Russia a terrorist state and, furthermore, to create a court to judge war crimes committed by the occupying forces. These are demands, both territorial and legal, that seem far from being achieved on the battlefield and that, precisely, sooner or later could lead NATO, led by the United States, to force a negotiation between kyiv and the Kremlin.
kyiv denies executing 10 Russian soldiers
Facing mounting pressure on Ukraine to clarify whether it executed 10 Russian soldiers on a farm in Luhansk province this month, kyiv authorities once again denied Moscow’s accusations. The ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, argued that the videos that have come to light these days, in which Kremlin troops are seen unarmed and lying face down with their hands on their heads, are actually “excerpts” from a fact different. According to him, he explained, it was about invading soldiers who “pretended that they were surrendering… And they committed a war crime by shooting at the Ukrainian forces.” In any case, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has assured that he will investigate what happened.
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