The Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Ukraine, andri melnikinsisted this Saturday on the need for a increased shipment of arms and ammunition by the allies to prepare their counteroffensive and manage to expel Russian troops from their territory.
In this sense, he explained that they need “ten times more military aid than they have to defeat Russia this year”. “We are grateful to our allies for their military aid, but it is not enough,” he then added, calling on the international community to “cross all the red lines that have been artificially imposed” and allocate the 1% of its GDP to this cause.
“Our allies need to understand the scale of this war. The support must be ten times higher at this time.”he concluded.
The statements come just days after the Foreign Minister, Dmitro Kulebacriticize the European Union for his inefficiency and delays in ammunition supply. Specifically, he took aim at the community bloc for its “inability to implement its own decision on the joint procurement of ammunition for Ukraine”which he considered “frustrating”.
This “is a test of whether the European Union has strategic autonomy to make crucial new decisions in matters of security”, he elaborated on the discussions that the Twenty-seven still maintain around the shopping of such weapons, on which they do not reach a consensus.
On March 20, the EU Foreign Ministers decided to allocate 2,000 million euros for this cause, for which the “European industry”. However, members do not share a common vision of what exactly this means.
On the one hand, countries like Francemaintain that “buying from the European industry” implies that the weapons have been “produced in Europe” and not that they are products stored on the continent but created and purchased abroad.
Instead, others like Netherlands maintain a more pragmatic stance that focuses on “help Ukraine” and considers everything else “secondary”.
However, after the official’s statements, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, mentioned that the bloc is “complying with its commitments”even with the blocking of 1,000 million euros to finance the orders, which correspond to the second phase of the plan.
“I have spoken with Dmitro Kuleba to confirm that the EU is fulfilling its ammunition commitments to Ukraine,” he wrote on his Twitter account where he also mentioned that since February 9 “More than 66% of the first 1,000 million euros has already been delivered” of the community plan.
“The urgency is clear: the EU will do everything possible to comply, and to comply fast”he concluded.
For his part, the US Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austinresponded to the requests that the Ukrainian president Volodimir Zelensky made to the general secretary of the NATO, Jens Stoltenbergfor more fighter jets and long-range missiles and said that “together we will make sure that Ukraine has everything it needs.”
(With information from Europa Press and EFE)
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Source-www.infobae.com