NATO is preparing to support Ukraine for years or even decades. The foreign ministers of the allied countries are meeting in Brussels to think about how to strengthen the support.
– Russia should not wait until we get tired of supporting Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told the media on Wednesday.
According to The Financial Times and Reuters, Stoltenberg has proposed a 100 billion euro fund through which the support could be directed. Publicly, Stoltenberg has not yet disclosed the details of the plan or the sums of money.
Stoltenberg hopes that the matter will be agreed upon by the July summit.
According to Stoltenberg, 99 percent of the support going to Ukraine comes from NATO countries. The handover of the weapons has been coordinated from the contact group led by the United States, in the so-called Ramstein configuration.
– The same ministers sit at the Ramstein meetings as at the NATO meetings, Stoltenberg says.
Now NATO plans to transfer support from this coalition to NATO. According to Stoltenberg, the support would become more permanent and predictable.
NATO would take a stronger role and still not become a party to the war
According to diplomatic sources, the underlying idea is also that support is more certain if it is in NATO’s own hands and not in the hands of the United States. pollster for the US presidential election Donald Trump’s a win could change US attitudes towards aid.
Neither Stoltenberg nor the ministers of the NATO countries took a position on whether the matter is related to the US elections.
NATO is trying to avoid becoming a party to the war in Ukraine, and that is why, as an organization, it has not handed over weapons, for example, but this has been done by the member countries. However, the surrender of increasingly powerful weapons such as tanks, fighter jets and long-range missiles has not led to an expansion of the war.
According to diplomatic sources, the Russian president Vladimir Putin in any case, interprets NATO as complicit, so the planned change to support would hardly affect this either.
Ukraine is currently not getting as many weapons as it needs to be successful in its fight against Russia. NATO countries still haven’t got their defense industries up and running enough to supply Ukraine with enough ammunition. This worries NATO countries, but ammunition deliveries have still not increased.
The ministers who arrived at the NATO meeting supported Stoltenberg’s idea of permanent support.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski says his country supports Stoltenberg’s effort. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron emphasized that Ukraine must win and Russia must lose.
– We will be safer in Britain if this conflict ends properly, Cameron said.
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Finland Elina Valtonen (collective) supports Stoltenberg’s idea of permanent support for Ukraine.
– Basically, we are positive that NATO takes a long-term and credible role and also to build a path to Ukraine’s NATO membership, Valtonen said.
Valtonen hopes that the support would be effective and that unnecessary overlapping forms of support would not be built. Now aid is flowing to Ukraine both through NATO, the EU and directly through the member states.
Valtonen on Macron’s ground forces: The initiative opened up a long view
President of France Emmanuel Macron hinted in March that sending ground troops to Ukraine is not out of the question.
After this, for example, Germany and several other NATO countries rejected the idea. However, some Baltic countries, for example Poland, did not consider the idea completely impossible.
The issue will also be discussed among NATO ministers. No one is sending troops to Ukraine, diplomats say. However, Macron’s initiative is being praised because it managed to change the tone of the debate and take the situation in Ukraine seriously.
Finland’s position is that no troops will be sent. Elina Valtonen also took a stand in a foreign online publication, and did not completely rule out sending troops if the situation worsens. In Finland, Valtonen’s comments were reported by Ilta-Sanomat at the time.
– I myself made it clear that Finland is not considering sending troops to Ukraine and is not discussing it, Valtonen says.
Valtonen says that his purpose was to open a long-term perspective on what can still happen with Ukraine. That’s why the discussion initiative was in place.
– I welcome Macron’s initiative in the sense that the war and emergency in Ukraine is not felt on the streets of Paris and Madrid as deeply as it is here, and the support is not huge. There are differences in this within Europe, says Valtonen.
The appointment of NATO’s new Secretary General got complicated
NATO was originally supposed to announce who will be the organization’s new secretary general at the April meeting of foreign ministers. The Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutten a large part of NATO’s major allied countries, including the United States, were already behind.
After this, the President of Romania Klaus Johannis signed up for the race. Since NATO agrees on the Secretary General selection unanimously, the game is open again.
There is still a strong majority of members behind Rutte, but Turkey, Hungary and Romania do not support his election, at least now, diplomatic sources estimate.
According to Valtonen, Finland’s candidate for Secretary General is still Rutte.