NATO leaders will share in the guilt for the deaths of Ukrainian civilians targeted by Russia, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who fumed at Western “weakness” following a rebuff from officials in Brussels.
“By refusing to establish a no-fly zone, today NATO leaders gave the ‘green light’ for further bombing of Ukrainian cities and villages,” Zelensky said Friday, according to a translation from Ukrainian journalist Oleksiy Sorokin. “All the people who will die from this day will also die because of you, because of your weakness, because of your disunity.”
President Joe Biden and other Western officials have vowed not to risk a direct conflict with Russian forces unless Russian President Vladimir Putin takes aim at a NATO member. U.S. and European allies have instead raced to provide weapons to Ukrainian forces, although some prominent Western observers doubt those new armaments will allow them to repel the invasion.
“The end result, if Ukraine continues to stand on its own, alone … is going to be the end result that Mr. Putin intends,” retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, who served as NATO’s supreme allied commander when Putin first seized Ukrainian territory in 2014, told the Washington Examiner. “The mass, even though it’s not being well employed, the mass that he can bring to this problem is going to be really ugly for the Ukrainian military and Ukrainian people.”
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged that Russia is adopting “increasingly brutal methods” in Ukraine, reminiscent of the tactics that Russian forces used while propping up Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad.
“The terrible expectation is that the suffering we’ve already seen is likely to get worse before it gets better for as long as Russia pursues these methods,” Blinken said Friday while touting the economic sanctions that Western allies have imposed on Russia. “The only way to actually implement something like a no-fly zone is to send NATO planes into Ukrainian airspace and to shoot down Russian planes, and that could lead to a full-fledged war in Europe. President Biden has been clear that we are not going to get into a war with Russia.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg demurred when a journalist asked if Western military assistance is adequate to “change the tide of battle” in favor of Ukraine.
“They have been able to push back, to fight back, and to slow down the Russian advances. And this is, first and foremost, the result of the courage of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” Stoltenberg said. “We have helped that because NATO allies have trained and equipped the Ukrainian Armed Forces for many years.”
Stoltenberg, echoing the consensus of the NATO foreign ministerial Friday, emphasized that the alliance is unwilling to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, as such a course would require NATO forces to shoot down Russian planes that violate the ban.
“Our core task is to keep our 30 nations safe,” he said. “We are not part of this conflict, and we have a responsibility to ensure it does not escalate and spread beyond Ukraine.”
That statement amounted to a rebuff of Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba’s appeal during a virtual appearance at the NATO meeting.
“Don’t let Putin turn Ukraine into Syria,” Kuleba said. “We are ready to fight. We will continue fighting. But we need partners to help us with concrete, resolute and swift actions, now.”
Took part in the extraordinary meeting of NATO Foreign Ministers. My message: act now before it’s too late. Don’t let Putin turn Ukraine into Syria. We are ready to fight. We will continue fighting. But we need partners to help us with concrete, resolute and swift actions, now. pic.twitter.com/s4FCaAOjNy
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) March 4, 2022
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace seemed to bristle at NATO’s restraint as Russian forces bombard civilian targets in cities across the country. “We are a nuclear alliance,” he said Friday, in a thinly veiled retort to Putin’s warning that he might use nuclear weapons if the West intervened on behalf of Ukraine.
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Breedlove praised Wallace while taking care to avoid any direct criticism of other U.S. and European officials.
“We seem to be in a real hurry to say what we will not do as opposed to what we will do,” the retired general said. “And so I think that’s an example of self-deterrence.”
