MADRID — The
US will reinforce Europe’s
defenses with a wave of new military deployments, President Joe Biden announced
Wednesday, as more Russian missiles smashed into Ukrainian cities.
اضافة اعلان
News of the US plan came as
NATO leaders met to
welcome Sweden and Finland as candidates to join the alliance, a double blow to
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and his bid to redraw Europe’s security map.
Biden boasted that the US announcement was exactly
what Putin “didn’t want” and Moscow reacted with predictable fury, denouncing
Sweden and Finland’s entry plan as “destabilizing” and accusing an “aggressive”
NATO of seeking to contain Russia.
As Western leaders met in Madrid, in Ukraine
officials complained that Russian missiles had hit civilian housing and
businesses in and around the cities of Dnipro, Mykolaiv, and Kharkiv, leaving
at least seven dead and 14 wounded.
In Kremenchuk, the town where a Russian missile on
Monday destroyed a shopping centre and — according to local officials — killed
at least 18 civilians, clearing operations continued.
Western leaders have dubbed the
Kremenchuk strike a
war crime, and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded that UN
investigators visit. Russia said it targeted a Ukrainian depot storing Western
arms.
‘What needs to be done’
The Russian defense ministry
said it had inflicted severe casualties on Ukrainian troops defending the town
of Lysychansk, in the eastern Donbas region, and said the Kharkiv attack had
hit Ukrainian command centres and a training base for foreign “mercenaries”.
Moscow’s February 24 invasion of pro-Western Ukraine
triggered massive economic sanctions and a wave of support for Zelensky’s
government, including deliveries of advanced weapons.
At this week’s summit, two formerly neutral
European countries — Sweden and Russia’s north-western neighbor Finland — will be
accepted as candidates to join NATO and Washington has announced that it will
shift the headquarters of its fifth Army Corps to Poland.
An army brigade will rotate in and out of Romania,
two squadrons of F-35 fighters will deploy to Britain, US air defense systems
will be sent to Germany and Italy and the fleet of US Navy destroyers in Spain
will grow from four to six.
“That’s exactly what he didn’t want but exactly what
needs to be done to guarantee security for Europe,” Biden said, of Putin’s
efforts to roll back Western influence and reestablish influence or control
over territories of the former Russian empire.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said NATO’s
expansion was “the opposite” of what Putin hoped for, and said that the leaders
meeting at the summit would “state clearly that Russia poses a direct threat to
our security”.
Moscow rose to the bait.
Weapons shipments
“The summit in Madrid
confirms and consolidates this bloc’s policy of aggressive containment of
Russia,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said, Russian news agencies
reported.
“We consider the expansion of the North Atlantic
alliance to be a purely destabilizing factor in international affairs.”
The Swedish and Finnish leaders are to be welcomed
as candidates for full membership in the alliance, after Turkey’s President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to lift his threat of a veto — the NATO ally
accuses Stockholm and Helsinki of harboring wanted Kurdish militants.
Turkey announced Wednesday that it would request the
extradition of 33 alleged “terrorists” under the terms of the agreement signed
Tuesday with Sweden and Finland to allow them to make membership bids.
On Tuesday, Zelensky addressed the NATO summit via
video link, asking for modern artillery and financial support.
“We need much more modern systems, modern
artillery,” he said, calling financial support “no less important than aid with
weapons”.
NATO countries, which have already committed
billions of dollars in military assistance to
Kyiv, will agree a large military
and economic support package to help them fend off the Russian invasion.
A sanctions task force of leading Ukraine allies has
frozen more than $330 billion in financial resources owned by Russia’s elite
and its central bank since Moscow’s invasion, it announced Wednesday.
Missile artillery
The Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs Task
Force (REPO) said the allies had blocked $30 billion in assets belonging to
Russian oligarchs and officials, and immobilized $300 billion owned by the
Russian central bank.
Norway said it would donate three multiple-launch
rocket systems to Ukraine, following similar decisions made by Britain, Germany
and the US.
Kyiv wants the long-range missile artillery to
counter Russia’s superiority in shorter range canons on Ukraine’s eastern
battlefield.
Earlier this week, at their summit in Germany, the
G7 leaders of the world’s richest democracies agreed to impose new sanctions
targeting Moscow’s defense industry, raising tariffs and banning gold imports
from the country.
But the Kremlin was unfazed, insisting that
Ukrainian forces had to surrender to end the fighting.
“The Ukrainian side can stop everything before the
end of today,” Kremlin spokesman
Dmitry Peskov said.
“An order for the nationalist units to lay down
their arms is necessary,” he said, adding Kyiv had to fulfil a list of Moscow’s
demands.
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