Rutte: Knowing that Zelenskyy would be in Brussels, I invite him and other allies here to dinner
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte says he invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to dinner on Wednesday evening, knowing that he would be in Brussels to attend a meeting of the European Council, and since there are other allies here, it made sense to invite them too. They will discuss increasing military and economic support for Ukraine.
Rutte himself said this on Wednesday in Brussels at a joint press conference with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda.
"Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, is visiting Brussels because he has a meeting tomorrow with the European Council and we thought it would be good to have a dinner for the two of us, so we will do that tonight to discuss everything to do with Ukraine at the moment and how to make sure that we can do the max to get him into a position of strength to one day when he decides starting to talk with the Russians on how to end all of this. But obviously, this has to be Ukrainian-led and only in the position of strength. And because other allies are also in town, it seemed right to have a couple of them over in that meeting to discuss particularly two things," the NATO Secretary General said.
Rutte named the urgency of increasing the supply of air defense systems and other weapons to Ukraine as issues for discussion. "As you know, the Ukrainians have calibrated that they need about 19 extra air defence systems to protect their critical energy infrastructure, but also more generally, they need more support to make sure that they can get into a position of strength and to be able to roll back what is happening at the moment," he said.
The second issue, the Secretary General named was the economy. "That's why also the President of the European Commission and the President of the European Council participate, because there is a lot to be discussed in terms of how to support the Ukrainian economy.," Rutte detailed.
Answering a question about what a future peace agreement and security guarantees for Ukraine might look like, the NATO Secretary General said: "You know my position, I believe what we should focus on now is making sure that Ukraine gets to this position of strength and that discussing all of this, which comes after that moment starts when Zelenskyy and Putin and others would sit at the table, is for them. And if we now start to discuss amongst ourselves what a peace deal could look like, we make it so easy for the Russians, because they sit there in reclining chairs, listening to our discussions, smoking a nice cigar while watching all this TV footage, and I don't think that is helpful. And of course, this is unavoidable in democracies, that we discuss all these things out in the open, but I think we would be very wise to put some lid on this and focus on the business at hand, and the business at hand is to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs to prevent Putin from winning and for Ukraine to prevail," Rutte said.
He reiterated that this is precisely the goal – a victory for Ukraine. "That's what we need to achieve, because our values are at stake, but also it has a direct connection to our own security and safety going forward," the NATO Secretary General said.
Asked why he was not invited to the meeting, Nausėda said: "There will be a limited number of participants in this meeting, Kent. We discussed this issue yesterday in a Jeff format in Tallinn, and Nordic and Baltic countries will be represented by Prime Minister of Denmark (Mette Frederiksen)."
He also agreed with Rutte's position that Europe "need clear strategy of Europe on the war in Ukraine, and our priority is to deliver, to support Ukraine as much as possible, because it's always too difficult to negotiate from the weaker side to be weaker side, and I think Ukraine should retain the initiative in this war to be even more successful on the battlefield, and only in such circumstances we can expect that these negotiations, if they will start later on, will be successful," Nausėda said.