Robles: “Any end to the conflict must involve Ukraine, NATO and the European Union”

Eduardo González The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, declared this Thursday before her NATO counterparts that it is necessary to continue helping Ukraine “for as long as necessary to achieve peace” and warned that “the end of the conflict cannot be reached without counting on Ukraine and without forgetting that NATO and the European Union also have to be represented.” Robles pronounced these words during the meeting of NATO Defense Ministers, in Brussels, in which the 32 allied countries participated, including the United States, a day after the American president, Donald Trump, announced that he had reached an agreement with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to begin “immediate negotiations” to end the war in Ukraine. In her speech, Margarita Robles stated that “Ukraine deserves a fair peace and it is they who must define the terms after three years of war, as an aggressed party.” For this reason, she assured that Spain will continue helping Ukraine “for as long as necessary because we understand that it is a way to achieve peace.” “We cannot reach the end of the conflict without counting on Ukraine, without forgetting that NATO and the European Union must also be represented,” she said. “All countries agree that we must not forget that Russia is a threat to the values that Europe defends,” she added. Specifically, the US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, declared this Thursday in Brussels that his country's position regarding Ukraine “is not a betrayal.” Aside from the agreement announced by Trump with Putin, Hegseth himself declared on Wednesday that it is “unrealistic” to include Ukraine's entry into NATO in any peace agreement negotiated with Russia and that it would also be an “unrealistic goal” to restore Ukraine's pre-2014 borders. “It is not a betrayal,” he declared upon his arrival at the NATO meeting. “As I told our allies yesterday, we recognise that there is a conflict and no one has been more committed to the Ukrainian mission than the United States,” he continued. “The whole world and the United States are interested in a negotiated peace, in stopping the killing, as President Trump has said, and that will require both sides to recognise things they do not want,” he added. Albares and the G5+ On Wednesday, the foreign ministers of Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom (the group supporting Ukraine, G5+), meeting in Paris with the High Representative of the EU for Foreign and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, and the Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Andrii Sybiha, pledged, in a joint statement, to “put Ukraine in a position of strength” in the face of a peace negotiation and warned (after learning of the agreement between Trump and Putin) that “Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiation.” For his part, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, declared this Thursday in Paris Paris, in an interview with French broadcaster RFI, said that “Ukraine and Europe must participate in any negotiation” and insisted that “an unjust war cannot end with an unjust peace.” “There are discussions that can be held bilaterally and that is what two sovereign states are for,” but “another thing is the discussions that lead us towards a definitive plan, a peace plan, and I do not see how this peace plan could be made without the sovereign countries that are now facing the war of aggression,” he declared. In any case, Albares was not surprised by the speed with which Trump and Putin have decided to address the issue because, he recalled, the American president himself had already warned during his campaign that he would end the war “in 24 hours.”

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