For the war in Ukraine, “the coming weeks and next spring will be decisive. Russia is massing troops on the front lines, 350,000 soldiers, almost double the number at the start of the war. We must continue our support for Ukraine until it prevails.” EU High Representative Josep Borrell said at a press conference in Brussels.
The war year, he adds, was “a year of death, destruction and crimes against humanity. I’m sure Vladimir Putin didn’t think when he launched the attack that he and his army would find themselves in a situation where they are now”.
Borrell also assured that the tenth package of sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine “will be approved by written procedure by February 24”.
“I didn’t say China was supplying weapons to Russia” for the war in Ukraine. “On the contrary,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi “replied to me: ‘We are not doing it and we do not intend to,'” specified the EU High Representative, adding: “We have supplied ammunition to Ukraine. The problem is that war has changed its nature: it is trench warfare. Russia fires 50,000 artillery shells a day. A day. That’s why we have to do what we’ve been doing so far, but more and as quickly as possible”.
In order to increase emergency supplies, he explained, member states would have to “priority to Ukraine” by supplying more ammunition. In the medium term, she must increase the production capacities of the armaments companies, which “cannot be done in a few weeks”.
The visit of the President of the United States of America, Joe Biden, to Kiev “demonstrates the importance that the United States attaches to the war in Ukraine. The United States, the EU, Canada and the United Kingdom and many other countries around the world support him in the fight that Ukraine is waging against the Russian invasion,” Borrell said. “I don’t know if he had specific things to announce, but he will certainly increase US engagement with Ukrainian fighters,” he concluded.