Nearly forty states met on Tuesday at the invitation of Washington, to mark their support for kyiv. Breaking with his position since the start of the conflict, Berlin has announced the delivery of around fifty anti -aircraft tanks.
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“Ukraine clearly thinks that it can win. All those who are here too.” This is how the American defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, translated the state of mind of the participants to the ‘Opening of a multilateral meeting organized, Tuesday, April 26, on the American air base of Ramstein, in western Germany.
Nearly forty states were represented during this unprecedented forum, bringing together numerous members of NATO, but also countries in Asia and the Middle East. The objective consisted in collectively assessing the military needs of Ukraine, two months after the start of the war launched by Russia, and of acting the high probability of a conflict anchored over time. What Lloyd Austin summed up a formula: “Help strengthen the arsenal of Ukrainian democracy.”
Since the start of the conflict, nearly $ 5 billion (4.7 billion euros) of military equipment has been provided to Ukraine by the United States and their allies, including 3.7 billion Dollars by Washington. “We have to act at the speed of war,” said Lloyd Austin on Tuesday. During his press conference, he announced that a contact group on Ukraine would meet each month, face -to -face or online, to continue the coordination of this support effort. The United States highlights the unprecedented speed with which these arms deliveries are made. It only flows 72 hours between the moment when a new tranche is validated by Joe Biden and their effective reception in Ukraine.
This meeting was organized in the wake of the displacement of Lloyd Austin and the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, in kyiv, on April 24. A visit borrows from great confidentiality, for security reasons. The videos and photos then broadcast, once the two officials outside Ukraine have shown a strong complicity, not only political, but human.
Daily bilateral contacts have contributed to placing the fate of Ukraine at the heart of American policy, like the relationship between Lloyd Austin and the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, Oleksi Reznikov, also present on Tuesday, Based on Ramstein. Officially, the strategy has been the same since the start of the war: economic sanctions against Russia, consultations with the allies, deliveries of arms, but no direct military involvement on the ground.
“We want to see Russia weakened “
In practice, these lines are not so obvious. When, visiting Warsaw, on March 26, Joe Biden said that Vladimir Putin “could not [could] stay in power”, this improvised remarks had been presented as a misunderstanding by his advisers because he seemed to feed the Russian obsession D ‘A Western plot, with a view to a regime change.
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