Send Ukraine more weapons, debate peace plans later, NATO chief says
BRUSSELS — NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Tuesday he wants members of the Western military alliance to focus more on arming Ukraine than debating possible scenarios for ending the ongoing Russian invasion.
“Ukraine doesn’t need more ideas on what a peace process could look like,” Rutte said, stressing the country’s urgent need for more military aid and missile defence systems.
Instead, should Ukraine enter peace talks with Russia, whenever it decides to do so, they should be able to negotiate from the strongest position possible, Rutte said.
“To get there, it is crucial that more military aid will be pumped into Ukraine,” the top NATO official said, highlighting recent deliveries from the United States and European countries.
The top NATO official was previewing a two-day meeting of the alliance’s foreign ministers in Brussels, focusing on supporting Ukraine’s continuing defence against the full-scale Russian invasion.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha is to brief his NATO counterparts on the current status of the fighting as Ukraine’s eastern front comes under increased pressure from Russian attacks.
Ukraine is also expected to make a renewed push to join the alliance after a suggestion from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that his country could agree to a ceasefire with Russia if NATO extends its protection to the parts of the country controlled by Ukraine.
“If we want to stop the hot phase of the war, we need to take under the NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with the British TV channel Sky News.
The NATO chief said however that the alliance’s focus has to be on strengthening Ukraine at the moment to defend against the Russian advance on the eastern front.
The alliance has so far declined to offer Ukraine membership over concerns that the Russian invasion of Ukraine would escalate into a conflict involving NATO.
The NATO secretary general would not comment on recent proposals from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration to secure peace in Ukraine.
Rutte said however that when a deal on Ukraine is reached, “it has to be a good deal” because of the risk of signalling weakness to China, North Korea and other countries hostile to NATO.
NATO foreign ministers also plan to discuss last month’s Russian launch of an experimental ballistic missile against Ukraine and examine Ukraine’s air-defence needs.
The Russian military has said that the new medium-range missile it fired at the Ukrainian city of Dnipro last week can hit targets across Europe and cannot be stopped by air-defence systems.
Deterring and defending against Russian hybrid attacks or acts of sabotage against NATO members is also on the agenda.
With the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and an offensive by an alliance of insurgents in Syria, the discussion could veer off topic when Jordan’s King Abdullah II joins the foreign ministers on Tuesday.