BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and his NATO counterparts are gathering in Romania on Tuesday…
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and his NATO counterparts are gathering in Romania on Tuesday to provide urgently needed support to Ukraine, including supplies of electrical components for the war-torn country’s battered power grid.
The Ukrainian network has been hit by targeted Russian strikes since early October, which US officials are calling a Russian campaign to weaponize the coming winter cold.
Ahead of the meeting, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also said that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “trying to use winter as a weapon of war against Ukraine” and that NATO allies and Ukraine “need to be ready for new attacks.”
The meeting in the capital, Bucharest, will most likely lead to the fact that NATO will again promise to provide Ukraine with non-lethal support: fuel, generators, medicines, winter equipment and devices for jamming drones. Blinken will announce significant US aid to Ukraine’s energy system, US officials said
Individual allies are also likely to announce new supplies of military equipment to Ukraine — mainly the air defense systems that Kyiv is so desperate to protect its skies — but NATO as an organization will not do so to avoid being drawn into a wider nuclear-armed war. Russia.
The ministers, together with their Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba, will also look further.
“In the long term, we will help Ukraine transition from Soviet-era equipment to modern NATO standards, doctrine and training,” Stoltenberg said on Friday.
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