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EU’s top diplomat calls for long-range weapons for Ukraine

This picture shows the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell sitting beside and talking to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba at an informal meeting of EU foreign affairs ministers in Sweden on May 13, 2023. (Photo by Reuters)

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has called on the West to promptly supply Ukraine with long-range weapons to fight Russia. 

“The Russians are bombing from far away so the Ukrainians have to have the capacity to reach... the same distance, the same range,” Borrell said on Saturday after a meeting with Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in the Swedish capital Stockholm, emphasizing that the issue must be addressed as speedily as possible.

Borrell praised Germany for its efforts in this regard, urging other European states to follow Berlin's example. Recently Germany announced a new shipment of military aid to Kiev including weapons, tanks, armored vehicles and air-defense systems worth 2.7 billion euros ($2.95 billion).

“I welcome the German effort and invite all member states to follow this example,” Borrell said.

In a similar move on Thursday, Britain said it would send its Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine, thus becoming the first Western ally to provide longer-range weaponry to Kiev.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly requested more and better weapons from the West to target Russian troops in an anticipated counterattack.

“Instead of asking when will the counteroffensive begin, ask, have I done enough for the Ukrainian counteroffensive to begin and be successful?” Kuleba said at the press conference with Borrell.

“The main topics of my conversation with EU foreign ministers today will be long-range artillery ammunition and short-range accession talks” to join the EU, Kuleba said.

Kiev has been pressing Brussels to speed up and streamline the work needed to add Ukraine as the 28th member of the bloc.

Since Russia launched its special military operation in eastern Ukraine in late February 2022, Moscow has been warning the West about the risks of flooding weapons into the former Soviet state.

Russia has also warned the West that supplying long-range and more sophisticated weapons to Ukraine would be crossing Moscow’s red line and only worsens the already dire situation.

In another warning, Russia's President Vladimir Putin even said that the nuclear tensions between countries had risen because of the war in Ukraine.

Following suit, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev warned that those Western countries that wish to see Moscow defeated by Kiev in the Ukraine conflict ignore the fact that “a loss by a nuclear power in a conventional war may trigger the start of a nuclear war.”

Meanwhile, analysts have warned of an “irreversible” disaster over the increased risk of a nuclear conflict.

 


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