By BUCHAREST. Nov 29 (Interfax-Ukraine) – NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is convinced that Russia’s brutal attacks on civilian infrastructure will not break the Ukrainian people, as well as spur allies to provide Ukraine with even greater support.
In Bucharest on Tuesday, before the start of the meeting of foreign ministers of NATO member countries, he said: “This is a war. This is a brutal war. And there is a deliberate attack on critical services, heating, light, water, gas. And of course the purpose of that is to inflict as much suffering as possible on Ukrainian civilians to try to break their commitment, their unity in standing up against the Russian invasion. I’m absolutely certain that President Putin will not succeed, that the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian armed forces, the Ukrainian leadership will not bend. But we’ll just mobilize even more in fighting back and, if anything, these brutal attacks against critical civilian infrastructure, it is only encouraging NATO Allies to do even more. Because we need to ensure that Russia doesn’t win.”
The NATO Secretary General is sure that “if President Putin wins this war, the message will be that when authoritarian leaders use brutal force, when they invade another country, when they violate international law, they can achieve their goals.” “That would be a tragedy for Ukraine, but it would also make the whole world more dangerous and also more vulnerable. Because the lesson learned for authoritarian leaders is that they can use force. So that’s the reason why it is in our security interest to continue to support the Ukraine,” Stoltenberg stressed.
“the message from all Allies will be that we need to do more. Both to help Ukraine repair the destroyed critical infrastructure, including the power and gas grid, but also, to of course address the attacks itself, by providing more air defence systems.” “This is partly providing more air defence weapons systems, but also of course to ensuring that those systems that we have already provided – and many of them are actually a modern, NATO standard air defence system, including NASAMS and others, that they are functioning. Meaning that we need to provide spare parts and we need to provide ammunition. So this is not only about adding more weapons, but also assuring that the weapons that have already been provided by NATO Allies can be used to shoot down incoming Russian missiles and drones,” the Secretary General said.
