17 Jan, 2024 01:38
NATO issues downbeat Ukraine update
Russia is advancing on many parts of the front in Ukraine, while Kiev’s summer offensive did not deliver the desired results, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday.
- “The Russians are now pushing on many front lines. And of course the big offensive that the Ukrainians launched last summer didn’t give the results we all hoped for,” he told WEF President Borge Brende.
- “Russia is pushing hard. And this is serious and we should never underestimate Russia,” he added.
- Stoltenberg insisted that there was also cause for optimism, because Kiev was not taken within a few days as “most [Western] experts believed” in 2022.
- He described it as a “big win” for Ukraine that it “has survived as a sovereign independent nation.”
According to Stoltenberg, Russia has already lost the war because it wanted to “control Ukraine” and Ukrainians now “want to be part of the West, of the European Union and NATO, and they’re closer to us than ever before.”
- “At some stage, Russia will understand that they’re paying a too high price and sit down and agree to some kind of just peace, but we need to stand by Ukraine,” he told the crowd in Davos.
- “If we want that to happen, a peaceful just end to this war, the way to get there is more weapons to Ukraine.”
- By their own admission, the US and UK helped plan last summer’s offensive in Zaporozhye that utterly failed to break the Russian defenses.
- Kiev is now struggling to replace its losses, issuing a call to draft 500,000 more troops.
NATO Sec Gen: Peaceful just end to this war - more weapons to Ukraine
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said he sees no signs of Russian President Vladimir Putin planning peace now and called for continued military support for Ukraine.
“But what we can do is to just maximise the likelihood that at some stage President Putin will understand that to continue this war will have a too high price. And then at some stage he has to sit down and negotiate to some kind of just, lasting peace where Ukraine prevails as a sovereign independent nation. And the paradox is that if we want that to happen, a peaceful just end to this war, the way to get there is more weapons to Ukraine,” he said during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on Tuesday.
So, as the Secretary General stressed, the more credible we are in our military support, the more likely it is that the diplomats will succeed.” According to him, what happens around the negotiating table with diplomats is so closely linked to the situation on the battlefield.
“There are no indications that Putin is planning for peace now, but he will when he realizes that we will not give up, that we have the military strength to support Ukraine,” NATO Secretary General noted.
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