Ukraine’s allies, pressed by Volodymyr Zelensky to deliver more weapons and ammunition, met in Germany on Friday to coordinate their military aid to Kiev, which says it is preparing a major counter-offensive. Organized on the American base of Ramstein, in the south of Germany, by the American Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the meeting also takes place in the presence of the boss of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, who has just returned from Kiev. He spoke there Thursday with President Volodymyr Zelensky, who constantly calls on Westerners to deliver more armor, artillery, ammunition but also combat aircraft and long-range firing systems. to hit Russian warehouses, far behind the front line.
The meeting, where some fifty countries are represented, began with discussions between Lloyd Austin and his Ukrainian counterpart Oleksiï Reznikov, which the latter considered “fruitful”. A new Russian drone attack targeted kyiv overnight from Thursday to Friday, without causing any casualties.
The main information to remember:
- Ukraine’s allies meet in Germany to coordinate military aid to Kyiv
- NATO chief says he is “confident” that Ukraine can regain ground
NATO chief says he is “confident” that Ukraine can regain ground
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday he was “confident” that Ukraine, in the process of preparing a counter-offensive, could regain ground against the Russians. “I am confident that they (the Ukrainians) will now be able to free up even more ground,” Stoltenberg told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of Ukraine supporters at the US base. from Ramstein (Germany).
“One of the main issues discussed here today was going over the different capabilities, systems and supplies that the Ukrainians need to regain more ground,” Jens Stoltenberg added. About fifty representatives of countries supporting Ukraine are gathered on the base to coordinate aid to kyiv.
“Living in freedom”
“All together, we will ensure that Ukraine has everything it needs to live in freedom,” said Lloyd Austin, assuring that Western support for Kiev remained “strong”. The question of “ammunition and air defense tools” is at the heart of the day’s discussions, he underlined. Between insufficient stocks, fear of escalation and logistical problems, Europeans and Americans have been more cautious than kyiv would have liked.
The delivery of fighter planes to Ukraine divides kyiv’s support in particular, with Germany being particularly reluctant. Slovakia and Poland have started delivering Soviet-designed Mig-29 fighter jets to Ukraine. But sending modern Western-designed aircraft has yet to be discussed. Several countries have said they are in favor of it and a decision would be possible “before the summer”, the Danish Minister of Defense recently affirmed.
“A Logistics War”
The Alliance is however focused on the supply of ammunition and spare parts so that the systems already deployed in Ukraine “produce the desired effect”, Jens Stoltenberg underlined on Friday on his arrival at the base. “It is now a battle of attrition and a battle of attrition becomes a war of logistics,” he explained. The West has provided more than $150 billion in aid to Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion, including $65 billion in military aid, he said.
After resisting the Russian assaults on the Eastern front all winter, the Ukrainian forces are preparing their own offensive for the spring or summer. Ukraine announced this week that it had received the first American Patriot air defense systems, an operation coordinated by the United States, Germany and the Netherlands. British and German heavy tanks have also been delivered since the end of March after being requested for a long time by kyiv. American Abrams tanks could follow soon.
NATO’s “aggressive nature”
Jens Stoltenberg’s visit to kyiv was also the occasion for Volodymyr Zelensky to press NATO to invite his country to join the Atlantic Alliance. Jens Stoltenberg reiterated the Alliance’s support for Ukrainian ambitions, believing that kyiv’s “future” is in the “Euro-Atlantic family”, but said nothing about the timetable. This rapprochement ulcerates the Kremlin, which castigated Friday, through the voice of its spokesman Dmitri Peskov, the “aggressive nature” of NATO, guilty according to him “of trying to absorb and drag Ukraine into the Covenant”. “We are dealing with an aggressive bloc, which considers our country as an enemy”.
kyiv has been calling for NATO membership for years, and even more so since the Russian invasion of February 2022, seeing it as the only real guarantee of its security against Moscow. Favorable in principle to the integration of this country, NATO is on the other hand very vague on the deadlines, an entry into the organization risking provoking an escalation in the conflict because Russia considers such an enlargement as a red line . “The main objective is to ensure that Ukraine wins” because otherwise “there is no sense in discussing membership”, noted Jens Stoltenberg.