The Diplomat
The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, received yesterday at the Ministry’s headquarters the new ambassador permanent representative of Spain to the Council of the North Atlantic Organization (NATO), Federico Torres Muro.
During the meeting, as reported by Defense, the Minister and the Spanish diplomat discussed the essential issues in which Spain is involved within the Atlantic Alliance, mainly the assistance to Ukraine in the war against the Russian invasion.
Torres was appointed to the post last October 11 by the Council of Ministers. Previously, he was Spain’s ambassador to Ecuador and El Salvador and director general of Strategy, Prospective and Coherence between 2020 and 2021, under the then Foreign Minister, Arancha González Laya, and the then Secretary of State for Global Spain, Manuel Muñiz. In July 2021, he was appointed by Minister José Manuel Albares to the position of director general of Foreign and Security Policy, one of the most high-profile positions within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Torres Muro, who holds the Cross of the Order of Military Merit with White Distinction, among other decorations, replaces Miguel Fernández-Palacios, Spain’s new ambassador to Italy, who played an important role in the preparation of the last NATO Summit, held last June in Madrid.
On the other hand, Margarita Robles held last Thursday a meeting by videoconference with her Ukrainian counterpart, Oleksii Reznikov, with whom she discussed the current situation in Ukraine and various aspects of the military aid that Spain has been providing to this country since the beginning of the Russian invasion.
During the interview, Robles gave an update on the current shipments of material and equipment and detailed the forecasts for future deliveries in the coming weeks. For his part, the Ukrainian minister expressed his gratitude for the speed of the Spanish reaction to the new needs that have arisen on the ground and assured that Spain has been “the first country to respond” to the need for anti-aircraft launchers and electric generators.
The two ministers also spoke about the training activities for Ukrainian military personnel that Spain has offered and which will be carried out from November onwards on Spanish territory, coordinated by the Training and Doctrine Command and the Land Force, and which are carried out both bilaterally and within the framework of the recently approved European Union Assistance Mission to Ukraine (EUMAM).
