If there is one clear takeaway from the recent NATO Foreign Ministers Meeting in Brussels, Belgium, it is that the alliance’s support and commitment to Ukraine is enduring, said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“Some are questioning whether the United States and other NATO Allies should continue to stand with Ukraine as we enter the second winter of Putin’s brutality. But the answer here today at NATO is clear and it’s unwavering: We must, and we will continue to support Ukraine. Ensuring that Russia’s war of aggression remains a strategic failure is as vital today as when the Kremlin launched that war almost two years ago,” he said.
“I heard no sense of fatigue or falling back — on the contrary, a determination to continue to press forward,” said Secretary Blinken. “And there’s a good reason for that. I think every Ally recognizes that this is a matter not only of doing the right thing,” he added. “[I]t’s a matter of self-interest, including for the United States.”
“[I]f we allow a country like Russia to act with impunity to redraw the borders of another by force, to try to determine and dictate the future of another country, if that happens with impunity then it’s open season and any would-be aggressor anywhere is likely to draw lessons from that. That’s why it’s been so important to us, but also to every country around the table, to stand strongly with and for Ukraine,” he said.
More than 50 countries, including most NATO members, have committed to ensuring that Ukraine “has what it needs not only to defend itself against ongoing Russian aggression, but to help enable it to retake territory that Russia seized from it,” stressed Secretary Blinken.
“[T]here’s also — and I think this is critically important — a commitment on the part of many countries to help Ukraine build a future force that can ensure deterrence and ensure defense against aggression going forward,” he said.
Russian leader Vladmir Putin believes that he can somehow outlast Ukraine, its people, and its supporters, said Secretary Blinken. “The work of [the NATO] Alliance, the work of the individual countries that are part of this Alliance as well as many other countries around the world to support Ukraine, to help it defend itself, as well as to set it up for the future — that’s the single most effective way to disabuse Putin of this very wrongheaded notion.”
