NATO Chief: NATO allies have a political and moral obligation to provide substantial support to Ukraine
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Allies can continue to supply Ukraine with weapons as much as needed
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg stated this at an event organized by Politico.
Stoltenberg noted that NATO allies had a "political and moral obligation" not to cut off arms supplies.
"As long as necessary, that's my whole message is that we need to be prepared for the long haul. I cannot tell you exactly how long this war will last.
But I just tell the decision-makers in NATO capitals, in Parliaments, the public opinion that we have a political and a moral obligation to provide substantial support for a long time. As long as it takes," said the NATO secretary-general.
The Secretary-General also stressed it had been challenging to predict how russia's war would evolve because "the outcome of the war is a combination of capabilities, but also the will, and the courage, and the commitment, and the morale," and noted the bravery of Ukrainians.
"What we have seen which I think has impressed the whole world is the bravery the courage of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, their will to stand up against the brutal russian invasion, and also the Ukrainian political leadership and Ukrainian people. That has impressed the whole world, and it just also demonstrated that president putin totally underestimated the strength of Ukrainian resistance and their ability to stand up against them," Jen Stoltenberg said.
"We should maintain support deliverables of modern weapons, heavy weapons, as NATO allies have now done for a long time, and also that NATO has a role to play in providing support," Stoltenberg stressed.
He underlined that the war in Ukraine started in 2014 when russia annexed Crimea and backed fighters in Ukraine's east: "This war actually didn't start; the war in Ukraine did not start in February. It started in 2014. What we saw in February was an escalation with the second invasion by russian forces."
Stoltenberg stressed that the war in Ukraine would be a "long-haul" effort.
"NATO Allies have been and should continue to be ready for the long haul because we cannot allow putin to, in a way, see that he is rewarded for his brutal use of force," he said.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba says Ukraine needs weapons to prove that the West wants to help Ukraine win, not just lose.
"To avoid growing weary of the war and falling for misleading narratives, the West needs to understand exactly how Ukraine can win and then support us accordingly. This war is existential, and we are motivated to fight. Properly armed, our forces can stretch putin's troops—which are already exhausted—past the breaking point. We can counterattack. Russian forces in both Ukraine's south and east, pressuring Putin to decide which of his gains to protect. To succeed, however, the United States and its European allies must swiftly supply our country with appropriate numbers of advanced, heavy weapons. They must also maintain and increase sanctions against Russia. And critically, they need to ignore calls for diplomatic settlements that would help Putin before he makes serious concessions," Kuleba wrote in his article for Foreign Affairs Magazine.
