BRUSSELS, November 27. /TASS/. Ukraine's inability to move the front line even with extensive NATO assistance confirms that Russia is not to be underestimated, but NATO needs to keep supporting Kiev, the organization’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at a press conference ahead of the November 28-29 meeting of the alliance's foreign ministers in Brussels.
"We see that even with all the significant help from NATO countries, the Ukrainians have not been able to move the front line during this year, this only confirms the fact that Russia cannot be underestimated," he said.
Stoltenberg claimed that Russian industry was allegedly put into military mode and has "got significant amount of ammunition from North Korea." This "makes it hard for the Ukrainians to achieve the territorial gains we all hope for," the NATO secretary general continued. "But rest assured, I'm absolutely certain that the message from NATO allies at this meeting when we gather later at the Washington Summit is that we need to stand by Ukraine."
He believes that "it is in our [NATO’s] security interest that President Putin does not win."
Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called Washington's claims that Pyongyang was providing military aid to Moscow pure speculation. On October 26, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov brushed off reports about alleged arms deliveries to Russia from North Korea. According to him, "there are a lot of these reports, they are all, as a rule, groundless, there is nothing to them."
Equipment issues
Asked to comment on the failure of the Ukrainian armed forces' offensive and Kiev's accusations that it had not been given enough modern means of destruction to succeed, Stoltenberg said Ukraine had received the most advanced weapons, including cruise missiles, air defense equipment, and was to receive F-16 aircraft soon.
Meanwhile, responding to being reproached for providing the Ukrainian armed forces with insufficient high-tech weapons, he hinted that Brussels believes that the huge losses of Western equipment are due to Ukraine not knowing how to use it properly.
"Just one thing about technology. I think that, first of all, we are providing Ukraine with more and more advanced systems, second, technology is not only about, you know, one specific item or weapon. It's about how they can operate together, how we can use drones, how we can use cyber, how we can use different systems and connecting them," he said.
According to him, NATO countries are currently trying to figure out new ways for Ukraine to combine the use of various types of weapons against Russia.
NATO countries are trying to "connect and integrate different weapon systems, so
they can establish or provide even more advanced capabilities," he said.
Lowering expecations
Earlier, former US ambassador to NATO and President of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Ivo Daalder in an article published in the European edition of Politico called on Western countries to abandon the goal of restoring Ukraine's borders militarily and to focus on providing security guarantees and integration into Euro-Atlantic structures for the part of the country that is still under Kiev's control. He noted that since the Ukrainian offensive began, the front line has moved over an area of less than 500 square kilometers, which is less than 0.2% of Ukraine's territory.
Daalder added that representatives of Ukraine and the West are currently looking for someone to blame for the failure of the Ukrainian offensive. Kiev accuses Washington of not sending enough modern weapons, while Washington accuses Kiev of misusing the supplied Western weapons, in particular, insufficient concentration of tank forces in the breakthrough zones and dispersing its units in several battlefields.