The bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell says he intends to increase military aid to Kiev to about €2 billion
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrel announced on Friday that the bloc will provide an additional €500 million in military aid to Ukraine amid the conflict between Moscow and Kiev.
Speaking with reporters at the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Germany, he explained that the new tranche, which will be the fourth provided to Kiev by the EU, will be allocated for the purchase of heavy weaponry including armored cars, tanks, and artillery, along with ammunition, and will take the bloc’s total aid to Ukraine to around €2 billion euros.
Borrell stated to reporters that the EU needed more people. “a new impetus for military support”Together with “more pressure on Russia with economic sanctions and continuing the international isolation of Russia and countering misinformation.”
He also stated his optimism that the bloc would reach an agreement on an embargo against Russian oil within the next days. However, he noted that, if no deal is reached at the level diplomatic ambassadors, it will still be brought up during the meeting of EU foreign Ministers that takes place on Monday.
I am certain we’ll reach an agreement. This is the agreement we have been waiting for. “We must get rid of Russia’s oil dependence.”He stated.
Shortly after Russia’s military operations in Ukraine, in February, the EU declared its first tranche. It was to pay for $500 million in weapons. The EU’s decision marked a departure from the bloc’s longstanding policy of not providing military assistance.
Additionally, many individual EU members have significantly increased their military support for Kiev as Germany – the EU’s richest country – reversed its stance on not providing Kiev with lethal weapons and significantly increased its military spending to assist Ukraine.
Kiev repeatedly insists on the need for more international financial and military assistance. Ukrainian officials demand that NATO create a no-fly zone in Ukraine and provide Kiev with all the necessary tools, like anti-air-defense systems, warplanes, and other military support.
Meanwhile, Moscow has warned Western countries against “pumping” Ukraine with weapons, saying that these actions were prolonging the conflict and increasingly making a peaceful resolution to the war impossible.
Speaking before Borrell’s announcement, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that the EU has gone from being “a constructive economic platform”You can become an “aggressive”Actor during the current war in Ukraine.
“The EU is turning from the constructive economic platform that it was originally meant to be into an aggressive militant player that has ambitions stretching far beyond the European continent,”Lavrov claimed during a Friday press conference, that the EU is “following in the footsteps of NATO”Both entities are currently merging with the EU looking like an add-on to the US-led militarist bloc.
Russia attacked Ukraine in late February, following Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. French and German-brokered protocols were intended to grant the regions that broke away special status in the Ukrainian state.
In recent years, the Kremlin demands that Ukraine declares itself neutral in order to be able to join NATO. Kiev maintains that Russia’s offensive was not provoked and denies claims that it planned to seize the two republics.
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