Alberto Rubio
“Ukraine has to win this war. It is vital for everyone,” said yesterday the UK Ambassador to Spain, Hugh Elliott, during a meeting with journalists prior to the NATO Summit, which will host Madrid on June 28-29.
“We need to keep up the pressure and unity to show Ukraine that we are with them for the long haul” in this “illegal, provoked and barbaric” war launched by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, he warned.
According to Elliott, the allies “have to be strategically resilient” in the face of a conflict that he did not rule out being “long and difficult”. For this reason, he pointed out that his government “will continue to work” in support of Ukraine as it has done so far and will maintain its economic support, which so far amounts to more than 3 billion pounds.
The British ambassador added, during a meeting with the media organized by the Association of Defense Journalists (APDEF), that “we should not get used to there being a war in Europe”, which he described as “a gradual normalization of the conflict”.
With regard to the doubts generated by some countries in raising the need “not to humiliate Russia”, he ruled out that unity within the Atlantic Alliance is breaking down. In this regard, he argued that “NATO’s greatest strength is to always operate by consensus” and recalled that French President Emmanuel Macron, during his last visit to Kiev, told Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski that “we will be by your side until the end.”
“NATO is proving that it is more important than ever, and not only to deal with this crisis, which will be discussed at the meeting in Madrid, but also with security and threats appearing in the Mediterranean or those coming from the Southern Flank,” the ambassador said. At the Summit, according to Elliott, NATO’s political and military adaptation to the new security challenges will be promoted and a new defense strategy model will be agreed upon to “counter an increasingly aggressive Russia”.
In Hugh Elliott’s view, Putin has already lost the war in Ukraine, as evidenced by the fact that “the official discourse has changed” and there is no longer talk of a “special military operation” in the country as a whole. “The operation to conquer Ukraine has failed, now they only talk about an operation to intervene in the Donbas”, in the east, he added.
