“Greater support is on the way, the allies have heard your call.” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg addressed Volodymyr Zelensky with reassuring words during a surprise visit to Kiev. The head of the Alliance guaranteed that Western countries will provide more military aid, and more quickly, as the Ukrainian president requests. And, while Russian forces continue to advance in the east of the country, he declared himself convinced that “it is not too late for Ukraine to win”.
To guarantee its security, however, Kiev is now also aiming for a bilateral agreement with the United States, which recently released a new military assistance package worth 61 billion dollars after months of diatribes in Congress. “We are already working on a specific text, our goal is to make this agreement the strongest of all,” Zelensky announced. The reference is to other similar agreements signed in recent months by Ukraine with various European countries including Italy last February. However, the pact with Rome, as clarified by Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, “is not legally binding” and does not provide “automatic guarantees of political or military support for Kiev”. With Washington, however, “the agreement should be truly exemplary and reflect the strength of American leadership”, assured Zelensky. The president insisted that Ukraine is “discussing the concrete bases of security and cooperation” with the US and “to set specific levels of support for this year and for the next 10 years”. This should include “military, financial, political support and joint production of weapons.”
During the press conference with Stoltenberg, Zelensky insisted on the request that “the delivery of military aid be faster.” An urgency dictated for Kiev by the dramatic difficulties it has to face on the ground, where it finds itself short not only of ammunition but also of men. The Chief of Staff, Oleksandr Syrsky, raised the alarm yesterday for a situation that has “worsened”, with Russia “attacking along the entire front line”. While the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, stated that “panic is growing among the Ukrainians at the front”.
For the moment, the Russian advance, still limited, is concentrated in the Donbass area, in eastern Ukraine. Kiev's forces said they had repelled “55 attack attempts” in the last few hours in the Donetsk region, where in recent days the Russians seized three villages in the Avdiivka area, a town that fell into the hands of Moscow's troops in February. And the Russian Defense Ministry said that another settlement was captured today, that of Semenivka. Raids were also reported in Odessa, with Russian missile fragments falling on Kivalov Castle, where a fire broke out. The toll is at least 5 deaths. Stoltenberg admitted that Kiev is in this situation because in recent times “the Allies have not kept what they promised”, and “the Ukrainians are paying the price”.
But the general secretary also spoke with Zelensky about Kiev's possible entry into the Atlantic Pact. “I am working hard to ensure that Ukraine becomes a member of NATO, we need all allies to agree,” Stoltenberg said. To then admit that even in this case some difficulties remain. “I don't expect us to have that agreement by the July summit” in Washington, he said. But for Zelensky the future of his country lies in NATO, because, he stated, “it is impossible to imagine the security of Europe and the Euro-Atlantic community without the effective participation of Ukraine”.
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