NATO Defense Ministers to Discuss Weapons for Ukraine

Date: 15 June 2022 - 21:34

News ID: ۱۰۳۷۱۳

BRUSSELS (Dispatches) — The West must step up weapons deliveries to Ukraine and prove its commitment to helping the country’s military fight along a 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line in a grinding war of attrition with Russia, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Wednesday.

Opening a meeting in Brussels on supporting Ukraine, Austin urged more than 45 participating nations to demonstrate “our unwavering determination to get Ukraine the capabilities that it urgently needs to defend itself.”

“We must intensify our shared commitment to Ukraine’s self-defense, and we must push ourselves even harder to ensure that Ukraine can defend itself, its citizens and its territory,” he said.

The meeting came on the opening day of a two-day gathering of NATO defense ministers at the alliance’s headquarters.

Increased arms supplies can’t come soon enough for the Ukrainian forces battling to keep Russia from taking control of their country’s industrial east after more than 3½ months of war.

In his nightly address to the nation, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pleaded Tuesday for more and faster deliveries of Western arms, specifically asking for anti-missile defense systems.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, who attended the meeting convened by the U.S. defense secretary, said he was grateful for all the military aid the nations already have shipped or pledged to Ukraine.

Russia has urged the Ukrainian forces holed up in a chemical plant in the strategic city of Severodonetsk in the Donbass to lay down their arms by early Wednesday, as it pushes ahead to completely bring the eastern region under its control.

Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the Russian National Defense Control Center, said on Tuesday Ukrainian forces should “stop their senseless resistance and lay down arms” from 8 a.m. Moscow time.

He added that the civilians encircled in the Azot chemical plant would be let out through a humanitarian corridor.

West ‘Shoot Themselves in the Head’

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said  that the West had shot itself in the head by trying to limit energy imports from the oil and gas fields of Siberia due to the Ukraine conflict, in sharp contrast to China which has increased deliveries of energy.

The war in Ukraine - and the West’s attempt to isolate Russia as punishment for the invasion - have sent the price of grain, cooking oil, fertiliser and energy soaring while Europe has vowed to reduce its dependence on Russian oil and gas.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Russia’s strategic partnership with China had withstood attempts by the West to sow discord while the United States and its European allies had destroyed their relationship with Moscow.

Energy supplies are steadily increasing: China knows what it wants and doesn’t shoot itself in the foot. While to the west of Moscow, they shoot themselves in the head, Zakharova told reporters.