“The price we pay as allies is calculated in money, while the price of the Ukrainians is calculated in blood,” says Stoltenberg.
NATO is closing ranks with Ukraine at a critical juncture in the conflict. The arrival of winter promotes a stagnation of the war fronts – in which Kiev has taken advantage of its offensives launched since the beginning of the autumn – and military aid is becoming more expensive every day and is being reciprocated even within the countries of the Alliance .
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, whose mandate at the head of the organization expired in 2022 and was exceptionally extended by the Allies after the Russian invasion, was prominently present in Madrid this Monday at the conclusion of the General Assembly of the Atlantic Alliance, which also included Pedro Sánchez and Ukrainian President Volodímir Zelensky.
“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 you can get what you want by force,” Stoltemberg said, warning of a war that, everything indicates, still has a long way to go. The Norwegian was even more explicit when he assured that “Putin cannot win.” Whatever it takes, he came to say by way of summary.
Stoltenberg used a mantra that the Atlantic Alliance used long before Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine and Russia was confirmed as a real threat. Each of the NATO countries must spend 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on military expenditure. “The price we pay as allies – Stoltenberg stressed – 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 made specific reference to the need to maintain military deployments in NATO countries potentially threatened by Russian expansionism and between which the three Baltic republics or Poland.
Volodimir Zelensky picked up the gauntlet that Stoltenberg accomplice threw at him. The Ukrainian president closed the Alliance Parliamentary Assembly with a message he has repeated in all his international speeches, 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 defenses – and funding to meet the Russian threat,” the president said.
After insisting that his country urgently needs to join NATO and the European Union, Zelensky assured that Kiev will not accept the slightest reduction in its territory, which means the recovery of Donbas and the Crimean peninsula, areas that have been annexed through referenda that are not recognized internationally. the Russian Federation. Even China, a discreet ally of Moscow, has taken the step of acknowledging Moscow’s dominance over those areas. “They will not take any part of Ukraine from us,” Zelensky told NATO.
The Ukrainian president asked the national parliaments of the members of the Atlantic Alliance to declare Russia a terrorist state and to create a court to try war crimes committed by the occupying forces. These are demands, both territorial and legal, that seem far from met on the battlefield and that could sooner or later lead to NATO, led by the United States, forcing negotiations between Kiev and the Krenlim.
Source: La Verdad
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