Russia was wrong when it bet on a quick military victory over Ukraine and it is also wrong if its calculation now is that international support for its government will fade, the leaders of the Atlantic alliance warned on Wednesday, the G- 7 and the European Union, gathered in Vilnius to provide military, financial and political support to the country.
The leaders of the G-7 “will stand by Ukraine as long as it defends itself from Russian aggression and for as long as it takes”, affirm the leaders of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Canada in a joint statement that will be the starting point for the signing of “bilateral agreements” of “security commitments” with Kyiv, which will include decisions such as the “sustained shipment” of “modern military equipment”, with priority to “air defense, artillery and long-range weaponry”, as well as the organization of joint military maneuvers to prepare its army to fight Russia and “repel any future attack”.
In the words of French President Emmanuel Macron: “Russia is militarily and politically fragile, more than many believed, while our support for Ukraine is much more durable than many thought,” he said at the final press conference of the allied summit held in the Lithuanian capital, some tens of kilometers from the border with Belarus, an accomplice in the war.
Spain, like other NATO countries, has agreed to join the plan to extend support commitments to Ukraine “for whatever is necessary and for as long as necessary”, announced the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez. In addition to Spain and Poland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Portugal and the Czech Republic will adhere to security commitments in Ukraine, according to government sources. The European Union will also contribute to the agreements with a more structural nature of military, financial and political assistance to the country.
The purpose of security agreements is twofold. For Moscow, make it clear that they will not abandon Ukraine in this war of attrition, no matter how long it lasts, even if when it ends it rearms and tries to attack again. And, facing Kyiv, the guarantee that the military and economic aid of the West has a structural character and can count on it apart from possible political fluctuations, an important guarantee in view of the slow progress of the Ukrainian counter-offensive and the calendar election of 2024, when the United States will go to the polls and the composition of the EU institutions will be renewed.
In exchange for the guarantees, the Ukrainian authorities will undertake to promote “effective reforms” in the face of “Euro-Atlantic integration”. The addition of the G-7 announcement to the statement approved the day before by the Alliance and the announcement of the shipment of more anti-aircraft defenses and armored vehicles allowed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to proclaim that “the Ukrainian delegation returns home with an important victory for security”. The G-7 announcement is “the first legal document” specifying Ukraine’s “security guarantees” in the long term. With the new architecture, assistance to the country “will not be based only on personal relationships, but also on a legal framework” that will define the “security umbrella” that Kyiv has until the end of the war and entry into the NATO.
According to Zelensky, the agreements will serve as a bridge until Ukraine is a full member of the Atlantic Alliance, but they do not replace membership of the military organization. “Security guarantees are very important for the Ukrainian people, but they are guarantees for Ukraine’s accession to NATO, not instead of,” the president specified in a joint press conference with the Allied Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. “I trust that after the war we will join NATO, we will do everything possible to make it so”, he remarked minutes before participating in the first meeting of the new NATO-Ukraine Council. “Today we meet as equals, I wish that we meet as allies”, Stoltenberg told him, to emphasize that the country’s accession prospects are real.
Although for Ukraine “the best” would have been an invitation to enter immediately, “Ukrainians are reasonable people and we understand that they are afraid to talk about this now because nobody wants a world war,” Zelenskiy admitted. which echoed the fears expressed publicly by several allied leaders in recent days that a decision in this sense would drag the Alliance into the “third world war”. “Ukraine understands that it cannot be a member of NATO while there is a war on the territory, but the signals matter”, and the set of signals coming out of Vilnius bring the country closer to the Alliance, said in a conciliatory tone Ukrainian, who on Tuesday tried to influence the negotiation of the NATO text with a harsh tweet in which he accused the allies of showing “weakness” towards Russia.
Allied leaders were exultant about the agreements reached at the summit, which, beyond Ukraine, include the approval of new regional defense plans to adjust them to the new security situation. The meeting, however, ended on a sour note when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a press conference, clarified that his commitment to ratify Sweden’s NATO accession protocol “as soon as possible” better” means it won’t take place before October due to Parliament’s summer recess, which it has no plans to interrupt.
