The Diplomat
The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, received yesterday her British counterpart, Ben Wallace, at the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense in Madrid, with whom she agreed on the need to address, within NATO, Russia’s increased activity in Africa.
This is the first visit by a British Defense Minister to Spain since 2005, when the then Ministers Geoff Hoon and José Bono met in Toledo. The meeting is part of the meetings that the Spanish Minister of Defense is holding with her counterparts from partner and allied countries “at a delicate moment in the international situation”, according to the Ministry in a press release.
During the meeting, the two ministers exchanged views on the situation in Ukraine and, in this regard, Robles pointed out the need to continue providing military, political and humanitarian assistance to this country, in addition to “supporting the investigations underway to bring to justice those responsible for war crimes that have been committed.” “The war we are experiencing is a priority for the countries of the European Union and for NATO, and our support is total and absolute, as well as the most resounding condemnation of Russia’s cruelties,” Robles declared in a subsequent meeting with the media.
The minister also warned that the expansion of Russia’s influence and activity in Africa represents a “worrying” threat to the security of NATO countries and, therefore, must be addressed by the Alliance during its next Summit at the end of June in Madrid. According to Robles, the expansion of the operations of the Russian state and of Russian private security companies, such as the Wagner Group, is “very clear” in countries such as Mali and Libya and, therefore, “NATO cannot remain indifferent to this situation”.
For his part, Wallace stated that both Spain and the United Kingdom are acting “side by side” to help the people of Ukraine, who are defending their country in the face of a situation that he described as “appalling” due to war crimes by Russia. “Russia is totally convinced that they have to wipe out the country. What they want to do is to wipe out the very idea of Ukraine as a nation and we are seeing it on the ground,” Wallace told the joint press conference. “But if there’s one thing we have to be happy about, it’s that both the European Union and NATO are very united,” he added.
The British defense minister also warned against “underestimating” Russia’s influence in countries such as Mali and Libya through the Wagner group, because “if Russia can use migration flows as a weapon at one end of Europe, it can certainly do so at the other.” For this reason, he agreed with Robles on the need for NATO to include the defense of its Southern Flank in its new strategic concept, the basic military doctrine to be approved at the Madrid Summit.
