NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg declared that NATO must allow Ukraine to use NATO weapons to strike deep inside Russia. Politico has reported that Stoltenberg also announced a five-year plan to provide Ukraine with €100 billion ($108 billion) in military aid. Some of the NATO members were very surprised.
Russia’s Response
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the US-led NATO bloc has been involved in a direct confrontation with Russia and is now falling into “wartime ecstasy.”
“This cannot be his personal opinion. He is an official; he is the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and that is how we perceive it. NATO is increasing the degree of escalation and flirting with warlike rhetoric, falling into ‘wartime ecstasy.’ This is the reality we must continue dealing with,” Peskov stated.
Other NATO Nations Are Concerned
Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has called NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg a “dangerous gentleman” for his proposal to allow Kiev to strike targets in Russia with Western weapons. Salvini warned that such a move could lead to World War III.
Zelensky Directs NATO
Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has urged the global community to work together against Russia, stressing that no nation can single-handedly survive a war with Moscow.
In an interview with Central Asian media outlets on Saturday, Zelensky said the goal should be to ensure that President Vladimir Putin “thinks about his survival and his security,” and that “the Russians think about how they can avoid losing the independence of their country – without threatening them – simply by showing how united the world is, how strong it is.”
Such unity is needed because “no one can survive a full-scale war with the Russians on its own,” the Ukrainian leader stated, as the Kazakh online magazine Vlast quoted.
On Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged US President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping to attend a peace summit in Switzerland next month. He isn’t inviting Russia. Zelensky wants a complete withdrawal and surrender. Russia wants to keep the land they occupy.
Berlin considers Vladimir Zelensky’s request for a NATO “missile shield” over Ukraine a step too far, German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said on Monday.
Speaking to the New York Times last week, the Ukrainian leader argued that NATO should shoot down Russian missiles from their own territory, as the US and UK had done with Iranian missiles and drones aimed at Israel.
Berlin Doesn’t Want World War 3
“From our point of view, that would be an involvement, a direct involvement in this conflict. And that is something we are not aiming for,” Hebestreit told reporters in Berlin.
Any US attack on Russian targets in Ukraine would automatically trigger a world war, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has warned.
The official, who currently serves as Deputy Chair of Russia’s Security Council, made the remarks after Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski claimed Washington had threatened to conduct such a strike should Russia use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday, Medvedev suggested that Sikorski aapparently, has decided to scare his masters.” He noted that Washington, unlike Warsaw, has so far refrained from making any such threats publicly “because they are more cautious” than the Poles.
“Americans hitting our targets means starting a world war, and a Foreign Minister, even of a country like Poland, should understand that,” Medvedev added.
Hungary Wants Peace.
Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said that the European Union’s proposed 14th package of sanctions against Russia over the Ukrainian conflict goes against Hungary’s own interests, and Budapest, therefore, will not support it. The country is also committed to continuing to block a massive €6.5 billion (just over $7 billion) military aid package for Ukraine despite a “ruckus” caused by fellow EU foreign ministers.
On Monday, the senior diplomat made the remarks during a press conference following a ministerial meeting in Brussels.
“We continue to insist on the need to make peace, to stop the senseless killing, and to prevent the escalation of this war, so we have not and will not contribute to the release of another €6.5 billion to finance arms shipments to Ukraine,” the minister stated.
Szijjarto acknowledged having a “huge row” with some of his colleagues during the meeting but vowed to stand his ground.
“There was a huge ruckus on this, as the German, Lithuanian, Irish, Polish, and other colleagues lashed out at me on this issue, but that couldn’t sway us in our position,” he revealed.
[Meanwhile, our borders are wide open.]
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