Western nations must be prepared for a “war of attrition” in Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned on Thursday.
In an interview with Britain’s newspaper The Guardian, Stoltenberg said the West should make preparations for supporting Ukraine’s military efforts against Russia for the long-haul
He urged members of the US-led military alliance to ramp up their defence bases in order to provide continued supplies of military hardware and ammunition to Ukraine.
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“The need [for weapons] will continue to be there, because this is a war of attrition; this is about industrial capacity to sustain the support” he said.
Breitbart reports: The Norwegian politician went on to say that the current heavy fighting around Bakhmut demonstrates that Russia is content “to just throw in thousands and thousands more troops, to take many casualties for minimal gains”, the Nato head said.
“President Putin doesn’t plan for peace, he’s planning for more war,” he continued, alleging that Moscow is seeking to expand its military industrial base by “reaching out to authoritarian regimes like Iran or North Korea, and others to try to get more weapons”.
Therefore, the NATO chief said that countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and others should be prepared for continued arms deliveries to Ukraine for the foreseeable future.
The interview followed the release of the alliance’s annual report, which revealed that just seven of the 30 member states actually met the required minimum two per cent of GDP on defence spending. Only the United States, United Kingdom, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland made the cut over the past year, despite much talk from nations such as Germany about finally meeting their commitments in light of the war in Ukraine.
Last February, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged that Germany would finally meet its NATO obligations “from now on“, committing a special €100 billion fund to revamp the defence industry in the country. However, given the incredibly poor state of the German military prior to the Russian invasion — with the previous government of Angela Merkel being content to outsource their military security to the United States and energy security to Russia — as well as the billions sent to Ukraine, Germany once again failed to meet its spending requirements.
