NATO member countries have been unable to reach an agreement on a multi-year pledge to provide military aid to Ukraine, the DPA news agency said citing sources in Western countries’ delegations.
According to the sources, the alliance’s members only agreed on providing Kiev with about 40 billion euros in aid during 2025. The news agency stated that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg ‘fails to get allies to commit to a multi-year financial pledge to support Ukraine.’
NATO members could not agree on what share each country would contribute to an aid package worth about 40 billion euros. The alliance’s members agreed that GDP would be taken into account in the calculations, the agency said.
Initially, Stoltenberg expected the NATO members to reach an agreement on multi-year financial commitments before the Washington summit (July 9-11).
Earlier, the NATO secretary-general suggested establishing a $100-billion fund (about 94 billion euros) per year for long-term aid to Kiev, but this initiative did not find support among NATO countries.
The amount was reduced to nearly $40 billion (about 37 billion euros). According to Stoltenberg, that is the amount NATO countries have spent annually on weapons for Kiev since the outbreak of the conflict.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian authorities are not ready to compromise with Russia on concluding the armed conflict, including changing the country’s borders, head of the Ukrainian presidential office Andrey Yermak said during a visit to Washington.
According to him, Kiev will listen to any advice on how to achieve a ‘just peace.’ ‘But we (are) not ready to go to the compromise for the very important things and values … independence, freedom, democracy, territorial integrity, sovereignty,’ Reuters quoted him as saying.
That said, replying to a question as to how the Ukrainian government assesses potential steps by US presidential candidate Donald Trump on resolving the conflict, should he become president, Yermak said: ‘Honest answer: I don’t know. Let’s see.’
He also noted that Ukraine will try to convince the new US administration to continue supporting the Kiev regime.
On July 2, at a briefing, following talks in Kiev, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that he had proposed to Vladimir Zelensky to agree to a ceasefire.
At the same briefing, Zelensky did not mention this initiative at all. Later, deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office Igor Zhovkva said that such initiatives cannot be considered in isolation from other settlement aspects.
At a meeting with senior Russian diplomats on June 14, Russian President Vladimir Putin put forward new terms for resolving the Ukraine conflict. These include pulling out Ukrainian troops from the four new Russian regions and lifting all Western sanctions on Russia.
He also demanded that Kiev drop its bid for NATO membership and Ukraine’s non-aligned and non-nuclear status be enshrined. Putin also pointed out that if Ukraine and the West reject these terms, they may change in the future. Kiev quickly rejected this initiative.
- The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is a lost cause given its submission to the will of the collective West, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Sputnik Radio.
‘Everything has been subordinated to the will of the collective West as it comes to substitute the Organisation’s charter and all those principles it must rely on,’ the diplomat said ahead of a State Duma meeting that will discuss suspending Moscow’s participation in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly later on Wednesday.
While the word ‘security’ remains in the name of the regional organisation, security in the traditional sense ‘has long been lost, both in theory and in practice, as nobody knows on what basis to build it,’ she argued.
No European security system ‘has ever materialised in Europe,’ Zakharova emphasised. ‘Actually, everything has long been rotten to the core, lost in its purpose,’ she lamented.
Russia’s second chamber the Federation Council at its plenary session unanimously on Wednesday voted to adopt the Russian Federal Assembly’s motion to suspend the Russian delegation’s participation in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE PA) and stop paying dues to the organisation.
‘The Russian senators and State Duma members consider it sensible and justified to suspend the participation of the delegation of the Russian Federal Assembly in the OSCE PA and the payment of contributions to the OSCE PA budget. During the suspension period, any actions to amend the rules of procedure of the assembly with the aim of prejudicing the Russian delegation will be considered legally null and void,’ the document states.
The Federation Council adopted the motion earlier on Wednesday.
The parliamentarians also believe that the leadership of the OSCE PA and its members have ignored repeated appeals to return to an equal interparliamentary dialogue, the statement says.
The senators and MPs stated: ‘Despite the Russian delegation’s repeated appeals and proposals, the priorities of the OSCE PA leadership indicate that at present, instead of creating conditions for a constructive exchange of views and the formation of a unifying agenda, this platform is being used as a politicised tool to deliberately implement an anti-Russian course, and also to intentionally distort what is going on in Ukraine.’
The MPs emphasised that biased discriminatory approaches, double standards and total Russophobia, as well as an unwillingness to engage in substantive discussion, testify to the extreme degradation of the OSCE PA as a mechanism for interparliamentary co-operation.
In addition, they drew attention to the fact that for many years the Parliamentary Assembly has ignored the problems related to the violation of the rights of national minorities in Ukraine and the Baltic States, the freedom of communication and education in one’s native language, has not paid attention to the blasphemous glorification of the Nazis and their accomplices, the harassment and murder of journalists who voice a position different from that of Brussels and Washington.
The parliamentarians also emphasised that the Russian delegation to the OSCE PA has, under spurious pretexts, ‘repeatedly been deprived of the opportunity to continue dialogue and to participate fully and equally in the work of the plenary sessions and governing bodies of the OSCE PA.’
Romania’s demonstrative refusal to issue visas to members of the Russian delegation to participate in the annual session of the OSCE PA in Bucharest in 2024 was ‘the last point in the emerging deadlock,’ as it has demonstrated that ‘confrontational tendencies and intolerance have taken over the common sense, spirit and values of this organisation,’ the statement reads.
The senators and MPs declared their readiness to return to work in the Assembly if the organisation’s leadership and a number of member countries reconsider their Russophobic and discriminatory approaches to resolving pressing problems of European security.
They also expressed the hope that sensible forces in the Assembly will show the necessary will to resolve the political and ideological crisis in the OSCE area in the interests of peace and stability on the continent.