BRUSSELS: NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Tuesday reaffirmed the alliance’s stance to allow Ukraine to use Western-supplied weapons without any restrictions, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin must not be allowed to prevail in Ukraine.
“When allies deliver weapons systems (to) Ukraine, it is best not to put restrictions on them,” Rutte stated, as quoted by Anadolu news agency, during remarks ahead of a meeting with European defence ministers in Brussels.
The Kremlin warned Monday that President Joe Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine strike targets inside Russia with US-supplied longer-range missiles adds “fuel to the fire” of the war and would escalate international tensions even higher, AP news agency reported.
Kyiv said on Tuesday it struck a Russian arsenal near the town of Karachev in the Bryansk region, over 110 km (70 miles) from Ukraine, in what two Ukrainian media outlets reported was a first strike with US-supplied ATACMS missiles, Reuters reported.
“Why is this so crucial that Putin will not get his way? Because you will have an emboldened Russia on our border… and I’m absolutely convinced it will not stop there,” Rutte told reporters in Brussels.
“It is then posing a direct threat to all of us in the West,” he said. “We need simply to do more. We have to ramp up the defence industry,” Rutte said as quoted by Anadolu.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday approved changes in the country’s nuclear doctrine which allows Russia to consider any attack on its territory by a non-nuclear country supported by a nuclear power as a joint attack.
Changes in the Foundations of State Policy in the Field of Nuclear Deterrence, the country’s updated nuclear doctrine, expands the range of countries and military alliances subject to nuclear deterrence, as well as the list of military threats that such deterrence is designed to counter, Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported.
I addressed pressing security challenges with EU Defence Ministers. We received an update from 🇺🇦. Our support is vital and we need to do more. Also discussed need to increase defence spending, plus #NATO and #EU work to ramp up defence industry pic.twitter.com/eBqNShLCQC
— Mark Rutte (@SecGenNATO) November 19, 2024
The move comes after the United States reportedly allowed Ukraine to use long-range missiles to strike military targets inside Russia, AFP reported.
“Aggression by a non-nuclear state with the participation of a nuclear state is considered as a joint attack,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday as quoted by AFP.
“It was necessary to bring our principles in line with the current situation,” Peskov added, calling the update a “very important” document that should be “studied” abroad.
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Russia “has always viewed nuclear weapons as a means of deterrence,” he said, adding that they would only be deployed if Russia felt “forced” to respond.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that 2025 will be decisive in determining who wins the war, in an address to parliament, RTE news reported.
“In the decisive moments – and they are coming next year – we must not allow anyone in the world to doubt the resilience of our entire state. And at this stage, it is being decided who will prevail,” Mr Zelensky told Ukrainian MPs.
“This battle is about the whole of Ukraine, the battle is about the whole of Europe, about order or chaos for the whole world,” he said.
On the diplomatic front, talk of a possible peace deal to end the fighting is growing following Donald Trump’s election in the US.
