Ukrainian Chief of Defence joins NATO news conference

Ukrainian Chief of Defence joins NATO news conference

not only between democracy and autocracy this is very much also about impunity versus accountability our choice is clear Allied Armed Forces will do everything they can to make sure that the rules based International order and the Democratic Values we uphold remain firmly in place we strive to protect a system in which those in power are held accountable for their action and that means that our job is twofold we need to keep supporting Ukraine and at the same time strengthen our own deterrence and defense at our sessions today the Allied Chiefs of Defense discussed how we can increase the executability of the new defense plans that were approved in vus last year this ensures that we are ready to face current as well as future threats what helps us is that the grand breing work for integrating and Interlink interlinking NATO and National Defense plans has already been done now we must actively work to make sure we can execute these plans with a minimum amount of risk NATO is stronger and readier than it has ever been but we want and need to do more in order to deter and defend any Potential Threat and with that I would like to give the floor to the Supreme allot Commander Europe General cavoli the floor is yours thank you chairman Admiral B uh good afternoon everybody it’s great to have the opportunity to speak to you after today’s very productive uh Chad session so as Admiral bow pointed out at the NATO Summit in vnus last July Allied heads of state and government approved our regional plans and this gave Allied command operations the command that I command the necessary framework to move forward with modernizing our Collective defense system and since then we’ve made very great strides in ensuring our plans are executable it’s clear that the plans provide everything our alliance needs to defend every inch of NATO territory and we are rigorously testing those plants at every opportunity and refining them as we go forward this past January for example we began exercise steadfast Defender which is the largest NATO exercise since the end of the Cold War it’s the first live exercise to test our family of plans in an article 5 scenario this is a very big Advance over the past three and a half months more than 990,000 Personnel from all 32 allies have been training shoulder-to-shoulder towards Collective defense we’ve rehearsed our ability rapidly to generate combat power and we verified our formations interoperability at scale so of course a major element of modernizing our Collective defense system is ensuring that we can operate at that scale large scale to synchronize multi-domain operations across the theater so we’re rebuilding our structures our mechanisms our procedures throughout Allied command operations we’ve recreated shape as a strategic War fighting headquarters and we’ve streamlined how Nations offer forces to Nato and we are adapting our Joint Force commands for their new task at hand we’ve done all this very rapidly the pace of modernization throughout the alliance right now is astounding be it in structure procedure or process we still have much to do of course but allies have responded with a sense of urgency we are more committed now than ever and now that we’ve refocused on deterrence and Collective defense it’s clear that NATO stands United strong and ready for any challenge thank you I look forward to your questions start here at the front you can the blue news agency of Ukraine thank you for your floor uh Admiral uh today Mr Putin in China stated that they are uh call for some kind of negotiations after the been briefed by the Ukrainian side today have you seen some kind of dramatic changes on the front line which uh could push Ukraine to s such kind of negotiations with Russians and to General cavi if I may uh you know we now talking a lot about the kive advance of Russian troops uh from your point of view and from your assessment um do Russians have enough uh troops and capacity for such kind of strategic Advance on that direction or that such kind of psychological operation to push both NATO allies and Ukraine before the peace talks in Geneva thanks uh no the Russians don’t have the numbers necessary to do a strategic breakthrough we don’t believe more to the point they don’t have the skill and the capability to do it to operate at the scale necessary to exploit any breakthrough to strategic Advantage they do have the ability to make local advances and they have done some of that they’ve also made some local losses so um yeah uh I’m in very close contact with our Ukrainian colleagues and um I confident that they that they will hold a line and as a result of that uh basically uh the situation is not changed to the point where uh the Ukraine uh authorities are willing to sit down and start negotiate uh I think the Ukrainian armed forces are fighting to regain the land that is theirs and that is difficult uh a lot needs needs to be to be done to achieve that and it will not be easy but it’s not easy for the Russians to actually get back what the Ukrainian Armed Forces took from them because the Ukrainian forces have regained 50% of the of the territory that that Russia uh took in the beginning of of the war so they’re now chipping away on that the Russian forces but it’s not strategic advances it’s not strategic uh uh successes so uh for the moment uh the meeting between Putin and K is is not the reason why things have changed in Ukraine we’ll go to Reuters next Andrew gr from Reuters um question to both of you did you hear any commitments uh around the table today to give Ukraine additional assistance particularly when it comes to air defense that’s something that the ukrainians have been asking for for weeks if not months now uh you have both said or certainly you have said Admiral Baron Secretary General has also said that if it’s a choice between NATO guidelines and helping Ukraine they should help Ukraine but yet some of the people around that table don’t seem to be making that choice so do you see any change in that uh there is a very uh a prominent example and that’s Germany they are going to give a third Patriot system to uh to Ukraine which is extremely important for the air defense of Ukraine um there is a lot of things happening at at this moment I’m not going to talk in detail on what was discussed but uh I’m convinced that we will see in the near future uh some serious improvements in uh in in the ammunition uh that uh that Ukraine will uh will receive uh there is a lot of discussion ongoing on uh also uh let’s say creative uh uh uh Solutions in terms that Nations try now to work together to find a complete system so if one has the sensor and another one has the shooter and the third one has the ammunition that together they make uh something uh they they they they come up with a solution for for Ukraine it is important though that um and that is something that is that is discussed regularly in the Ukraine defense contact group is that Nations not only promise uh to deliver certain things but that they also announce for Ukraine uh to at what at what time within how many how much time they actually are going to be able to deliver it so it’s not just the promise but it is also in the end of course the the ammunition and the systems that the ukrainians need so I think that is something that has to has to improve um there was a delay for for for a lot of reasons that we know but I think we see now that there is uh that there’s practical help on its way uh to to Ukraine and I heard a number of chiefs of Defense talk about uh deliveries within a days or a week things like that so I think we will the ukrainians not only we but the ukrainians will see improvements in the deliveries it’s probably also worth pointing out that with regard to the meeting today that was a meeting of NATO Chiefs of defense and NATO is not the exclusive or exhaustive list of uh of donors to to to Ukraine so there are plenty of other countries out there that are working hard toward the ends you described especially about groundbased air defense Bloomberg uh natal Dak from Bloomberg I wanted to come back to the question on the battlefield in Ukraine if I may um just to elaborate a bit what do you assess as Russia’s objective uh with their latest push in the Northeast I mean can this also be viewed as the start of the expected Russia Russian summer offensive or do you expect another bigger push at some point in the coming weeks thanks sure well you never know for sure what what you know an adversary is going to do or or what they intend to do um clearly they’re attacking Southward toward harib clearly um they intend to take back some of the territory that they lost last year um in Ukraine’s spectacular route of their forces um um the exact sequence and how they’re going to do that that may not be entirely clear yet and it’s best to it’s best to leave things like that to our Ukrainian colleagues to puzzle out and uh and uh and probably not share how much they know about the other side’s intentions um is this the summer offensive you know one can never be sure um what we don’t see is large large numbers of reserves being being generated someplace there is a a u a standard mobilization that is a a semiannual uh draft callup going on right now in Russia um um uh but that is largely unrelated to the to the conflict so far channel 24 um thank you Sopo channel 24 uh currently the Russian army is launching an offensive in the car region and according to the information available in Ukrainian uh public space the offensive has been stopped uh do you share this information and Views and what could NATO do in terms of supplying Ukrainian Army to avoid such situation in the future thank you the the you know whether or not offensive is stopped or not you know takes takes a little bit of time to figure out right I mean the offensive goes stops goes stops go so I’m not familiar with what exactly reports you’re talking about from the uh from the Ukrainian media ma’am um but you in war you never count things out until until you’re sure what equipment did the do the ukrainians need what could help exactly what they’re getting right now they’re being shipped vast amounts of ammunition vast amounts of uh short range air defense systems and uh significant amounts of armored vehicles right now and and I think it’s um it’s important to understand and to explain it’s it’s whatever we do not necessarily will prevent the Russians to do something so it’s not that we can prevent actions of the Russians what we can do is to make sure that the Ukrainian armed forces are prepared to the maximum are having the right equipment and the right ammunition to counter any offensive of the Russians the things we do and and how we help the ukrainians is uh is is not necessarily stopping the Russians in terms of deterrence it’s past that because the war has started and the war is now as I said in the 813th day so you cannot deter anything the the Russians will continue because they haven’t they haven’t achieved any of their strategic goals that’s why they continue and that’s why Ukraine has to continue apart from the fact that they want the territory break that was taken from them so okay Wall Street Journal thank you Dan Michaels with the Wall Street Journal I’m curious what within NATO you’re learning about Russia’s ability to learn from its early mistakes and disorganization um well we hear what you’re saying today that they don’t have don’t appear to have the strategic capability to make a a breakthrough um in a big way they do seem to have uh reorganized a bit so um you know as an organization that spends a lot of time observing the Russian military what sorts of things are you learning thank you yeah clear clearly from the initial setbacks Russia like any army uh sat back um figured out what problems they had and attempted to correct them in some cases Dan they they’ve successfully corrected things in some cases they’ve made improvements in some they’ve been unable to um you know and it’s the task of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to find those areas that haven’t been improved and exploit them and to defend against those things that have been improved but the the Russian military has proven itself to be an organization that is uh uh prepared and able to correct its mistakes and and to move forward um and has demonstrated a certain amount of resilience in that regard um however you know war is a competitive Venture and what you do is only important relative to what the other side has done the ukrainians capacity for Innovation for um uh adaptation for creation of new techniques on the Fly is truly unmatched um and and I think we are all learning a lot from watching the Ukrainian adaptations to this battlefield I I think if you look at what happens you see some improvements for example the use of ew was basically non-existent in the beginning and you now see there’s more brought to bear and we were surprised actually that it wasn’t used earlier uh Logistics is probably a little bit better than in the in the in the in the earlier part of the war because they didn’t think about it because they thought it was a three-day War so those are sort of uh logical things industrial capacity is a change that we see where where they are actually uh moving forward faster than than we in in in in Europe and in North America so I think there is a number of things that they have improved but uh there’s a number of things that they haven’t improved in terms of if you look at the quality of the of the troops they have a big problem still in making sure that the new troops are trained to a level that is actually better than the than the troops that were originally available so they have now more troops but the quality of the troops is low lower than the troops they started the conflict with and that has to do that a lot of the officers and that were killed in the beginning of the war are now not available of course to train the younger troops so I think that is one of the the the problems that that is haunting them and that they haven’t solved that one and the other one is simple equipment for the forces is not ideal is not good is not better than the equipment they started off with so there’s there’s a number of things that is serious problems for the for the Russian forces and a number of things they have improved on okay final question over there vitalo Freedom TV channel did you discuss the proposition of General Secretary uh to launch long-term financial support for Ukraine he said about uh 100 uh billion dollarars or Euro uh in five years uh what do you think about this idea and uh do you have enough resources to provide such longterm support thank you uh as you hopefully understand that is not a military question that is a political question to be answered by the governments within the alliance whether they want to make sure that there is a a 100 billion or whatever the number is available in the longer term for for for UK Ukraine uh so no that is not being discussed because that is not something the chiefs of defense of the alliance can solve uh it is it is however it is an understandable thing to look at the longer term support of Ukraine and that is militarily in terms of capabilities ammunition training that is something we we have uh been talking about in terms of how we can contribute to that and then of course the other uh element is the longer term financial support so it’s it’s something that was mentioned but it is not a discussion point for the Chiefs of Defense okay thank you all very much for being with us and have a good evening

Chair of the NATO Military Committee Admiral Rob Bauer and Supreme Allied Commander for Europe General Christopher Cavoli hold a news conference in Brussels, which will also be attended by the Ukrainian Chief of Defence.

Follow live updates on the war in Ukraine https://trib.al/Qn3HqHW

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