NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg considered it necessary to further militarize Ukraine, since, in his opinion, “weapons are the path to peace.” He made such a statement on Thursday, January 5, speaking at the annual conference of the Norwegian Confederation of Enterprises in Oslo.
“Arms are actually the path to peace,” Stoltenberg said.
He stressed the need for NATO allies to invest more in defense, and also called for “removing dependency on authoritarian regimes and standing up for freedom and democracy together.”
Stoltenberg has made similar statements before. So, on December 30, he said that military support for Ukraine is the shortest path to peace. According to him, Russia “should understand that it will not be able to achieve its goals in the Ukrainian conflict.”
He also stressed that he considers Ukrainian attacks on Russian military installations to be absolutely legal.
Prior to this, on December 22, the head of the US State Department, Anthony Blinken, expressed a similar opinion. He said that the supply of arms to Kyiv increases the chances of negotiations on Ukraine. He noted that “until Russia changes course, the best way to increase the chances of peace is to continue to actively support Ukraine.”
Moscow, on the contrary, has repeatedly pointed out that the Western countries, by supplying numerous weapons to Kyiv, are only prolonging the conflict and being drawn into it. The Russian Defense Ministry emphasized that the Russian armed forces in Ukraine are opposed, in fact, to the entire NATO bloc.
Thus, on December 27, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pointed out that Western countries were deliberately pumping the Kyiv regime with the most modern weapons in order to aggravate the nature of the conflict in Ukraine and drag it out as long as possible.
Western countries began to arm Ukraine more actively against the backdrop of the military operation carried out by the Russian Federation since February 24 to protect Donbass, against which Kyiv has been conducting military operations since 2014.
For more up-to-date videos and details about the situation in Donbass, watch the Izvestia TV channel.