NATO chief Stoltenberg warns
“Putin is not planning for peace, he is planning for more war”
3/23/2023 5:33 am
NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg does not believe that the war in Ukraine will end soon. Therefore, the West will probably have to continue supplying weapons and equipment to Kiev for a long time. “This is a war of attrition,” the Norwegian makes clear.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has vowed to the West that it will have to continue arming Ukraine to fight the Russian invasion for a long time to come. Russian President Vladimir Putin has no immediate plans for peace in Ukraine, he told the Guardian newspaper.
“President Putin is not planning for peace, he is planning for more war.” The West must therefore be prepared to continue supplying Kiev with weapons for a long time to come. Russia is increasing military industrial production for its “war of attrition” and is reaching out to “authoritarian regimes like Iran or North Korea” to get more weapons, Stoltenberg said. The fierce fighting around Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine showed that Russia was prepared to “deploy thousands and thousands of soldiers and accept many casualties for minimal gains”.
As a result, the US, UK, France, Germany and other western states would have to be prepared to provide Ukraine with arms, ammunition and spare parts for a long period of time. “The need will continue because this is a war of attrition; it’s about the industrial capacity to sustain support.”
Stoltenberg said that with equipment provided by the West, Ukrainians would be able to “take back territory and liberate more and more land” that Russia captured after the February 2022 invasion. The goal is to “enable the Ukrainians to launch an offensive and recapture territory.”