The head of NATO, on an unannounced visit to Kiev, promises that arms deliveries to Ukraine will increase. Zelenski asks the US to speed up its aid

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg admitted to Ukrainians on Monday that members of his alliance had not followed through on military aid promises in recent months, but promised that the flow of arms and ammunition would increase from now on, while President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked the United States to accelerate its arms deliveries, reports Reuters.

On an unannounced visit to Ukraine, the secretary general of the transatlantic military alliance held talks with President Volodymyr Zelensky and was to address the Ukrainian parliament, the Rada.

His visit – the third since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – comes at a difficult time on the battlefield for Ukraine. After a failed Ukrainian counter-offensive last year, Russian forces took the initiative – at least in part – due to a lack of weapons and ammunition from Kiev’s Western partners.

“I will also be very honest with President Zelensky and also with the Rada, that the NATO allies have not delivered what we promised in recent months,” Stoltenberg declared on the train that was taking him to Kiev on Monday. “The United States spent six months agreeing on a package, and the European allies did not deliver the ammunition we promised. But now I am confident that things will change,” he said.

The US Congress recently approved, after months of procrastination, an aid package for Ukraine worth more than $60 billion, quickly signed by President Joe Biden, and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a “record” commitment last week against Kiev. Stoltenberg also recalled that Germany agreed to supply Ukraine with a new Patriot air defense system, and the Netherlands increased its aid to Kiev. He said he expects other “new commitments to come”.

“This will make the difference – just as the lack of support made the difference,” Stoltenberg said, alluding to Ukrainian failures on the battlefield.

He also said that the Russians paid “a high price for marginal territorial gains” and that Ukraine can still change the situation. “It’s not too late for Ukraine to win. But that’s why it’s so urgent that NATO allies now do what we promised and turn these commitments into real arms and ammunition deliveries, and I’m now confident that this will happen now,” Stoltenberg said.

For his part, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday that vital US weapons are beginning to arrive in Ukraine in small quantities and that the process must be accelerated as advancing Russian forces seek to take advantage of this.

Zelenski declared in a press conference in Kiev together with the head of NATO that the situation on the battlefield directly depends on the speed of ammunition deliveries to Ukraine. “Timely support for our army. Today I still don’t see anything positive about it. There are deliveries, they started easily, this process must be accelerated,” he declared.

On Sunday, Oleksandr Sîrski, the commander of Ukraine’s army, said his troops had withdrawn from three villages in the east of the country, where Russian forces are on the offensive and gradually gaining ground.

“The Russian army is now trying to take advantage of a situation where we are waiting for supplies from our partners, and that is precisely why the speed of deliveries means stabilizing the front,” Zelenski said. “Russia is preparing for offensive actions,” he added.

The Ukrainian leader also stressed the need for deliveries of Patriot, sophisticated air defense missile launch systems, which Kiev wants to obtain from its allies to counter Russia’s long-range missiles and drone attacks. He said that Kiev has made some progress in obtaining missile supplies for the Patriot system, but that it is still working on the issue of obtaining new missile launchers.

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