The United States and the rest of the countries of the Atlantic Alliance yesterday reiterated their full support for Ukraine and tried to maintain high morale about the progress of the war amid declining public interest as a result of the new outbreak of violence in the Middle East. “There is no feeling of fatigue,” said the Secretary of State of the North American country, Antony Blinken, at the end of the meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council held in Brussels.
“Some question whether the US and other allies should continue to support Ukraine as we head into Vladimir Putin’s second winter of brutality. But NATO’s response today has been clear and unwavering. We must continue to support Ukraine and we will continue to do so,” not only to resist but to “recover territory,” reiterated Blinken, who minimized the political differences that keep the latest military aid package blocked in Congress. Her German colleague, Annalena Baerbock, admitted however that “Ukraine is disappearing from the public eye and that could be fatal” to the war.
With the arrival of the so-called mud season – bezdorizhzhia, in Ukrainian – Kyiv’s Western allies do not expect major changes in the battle line for months, not at least until the definitive reinforcement of its Ukrainian air defenses arrives next year. , the promised F-16 combat aircraft for which its army has been training for months on European soil. “We are going to continue fighting, Ukraine is not going to give in,” the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmitro Kuleba, assured them, who tried to reassure the allies about the military situation and ruled out sitting down to negotiate with Vladimir Putin in the short term, something he said that no one has raised it directly. “Our strategic objective” of returning to the 1991 borders – which therefore includes the Crimean peninsula, which Russia unilaterally annexed in 2014 – has not changed.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg once again insisted on the idea of ??not losing sight of the fact that “Ukraine has prevailed as a sovereign and independent nation” and has inflicted “severe damage” on Russia, which is increasingly “mortgaging its future.” in China”. For the first time, Stoltenberg quantified the losses suffered by the Russian armed forces and economy to emphasize the “major strategic mistake” made by Putin in invading the neighboring country.
“Hundreds of planes. Thousands of tanks. And more than 300,000 casualties,” said the head of the Atlantic Alliance before detailing the strong economic pressure to which Moscow is subjected. “Oil and gas revenues are declining. Russian banking assets are subject to sanctions. More than a thousand international companies have stopped or reduced their operations in the country and 1.3 million people left last year,” Stoltenberg highlighted.
However, he asked “not to underestimate” Russia and assured that “it has stockpiled a large number of missiles for the winter,” and reiterated the call to the allies to show “not only with words but with deeds” their solidarity with Kyiv. Kuleba, for his part, once again asked the allies to strengthen his military industry. The EU, he recalled, has only sent them 300,000 ammunition, compared to the million that in March it promised to deliver within a year.
