The Diplomat
The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, assured yesterday in Congress that Spain could send new weapons to Ukraine “if they need them”, thus resuming an issue that has generated evident discrepancies within the coalition government of Pedro Sanchez. Meanwhile, the conflict yesterday returned to polarize the political debate during the session of control to the Executive.
“Our solidarity with Ukraine is total, so, if they need it, we will send the material we have and that can help the heroic defense they are doing,” the minister told the press before appearing before the Defense Committee of the Congress of Deputies, quoted by the Europa Press agency. “Neither Spain nor NATO will send troops to Ukraine, but we will not abandon them. It has been demonstrated with unprecedented economic measures and with the supply of military material,” she added.
The sending of arms to Ukraine was the detonator of the controversy between two ministers of Unidas Podemos -from which the vice-president and leader of the space of Unidas Podemos in the Government, Yolanda Díaz, dissociated herself- and the socialist ministers, especially after the head of Social Affairs, Ione Belarra, insinuated that the PSOE was “the party of war”.
This statement was later qualified and rectified by the spokesperson of Podemos, Isa Serra. Likewise, the spokesman of Unidas Podemos in Congress, Pablo Echenique, assured yesterday that the controversy has been “settled” by “both parties”, although he specified that his party maintains its position on the arms shipment and insisted that Belarra did not refer to the PSOE when she spoke of the “parties of war”, but to the “war rage” of the “right and extreme right”.
During her appearance before the Defense Committee, Robles reaffirmed yesterday Spain’s “commitment to deterrence and collective security” because “we are a key country and a responsible and serious partner of the security and defense organizations of which we are part”. He also assured that the arms shipments made to date were carried out “within a framework of unity and solidarity” and specified that on February 27 two planes were chartered with 20 tons of protective and humanitarian material, such as “helmets, vests, protective equipment, medicines or mine detectors”, and on March 4 and 5 another four planes left with 1,370 grenade launchers, 700,000 rounds of ammunition and light machine guns.
“I want to make it very clear that the Government has been betting all this time on the diplomatic way to avoid an armed conflict among the European people. The only one responsible for the war is Putin,” who “has to pay for it,” he said. For his part, the president of the Defense Committee, José Antonio Bermúdez de Castro (PP), assured the “unconditional” support of his party for the Government’s policy towards Ukraine.
Control session
This conciliatory tone was conspicuous by its absence during the morning control session, when the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, affirmed that the Government is working with Europe on the “economic response” so that neither industries nor citizens are “hostages of the energy blackmail” to which Putin is “trying to subject Europe”, and assured that inflation and the rise in energy prices are only due to Vladimir Putin’s “illegal war”, an explanation that he extended to 2021 because “he had been preparing” the invasion of Ukraine for more than a few months.
In her reply, the spokeswoman for the Popular Group, Cuca Gamarra, said that Sánchez is the president “of a thousand alibis: we already know him. First he used the pandemic and today it has become clear to us that you are willing to use war”. She also urged Sánchez to continue with the “rectification”, as he did with the shipment of weapons, and to “expel” Podemos from his Executive because the Spaniards “do not deserve” ministers who “support Putin” and call them “war” parties.
“What I had yet to hear is that I am using the war for what, Mrs. Gamarra, what am I using the war for?”, Sánchez replied. What have I used the pandemic for, your honor? A little respect, a little respect for the Government of Spain, which is facing first a pandemic and now a war precisely without the support of the main opposition party, as always,” he added.
