NATO foreign ministers begin on Tuesday the first of two days of meeting in Bucharest, the Romanian capital, where they are to agree on ways to boost support for Ukraine and review “challenges posed by China.”
This meeting of the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s main political decision-maker, which will bring together foreign ministers at the Palace of Parliament, will bring Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba to discuss the country’s most urgent needs and NATO’s long-term support.
At the center of the agenda of the meeting, which will include the head of Portuguese diplomacy João Gomes Cravinho, will be the conflict in Ukraine, while the Russian Federation took advantage of the arrival of winter to strengthen its offensive.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg had already foreseen that the Alliance would “not back down” and pledged support to the Ukrainian authorities “for as long as necessary”, acknowledging the country’s “terrible start to winter”.
Stoltenberg hopes foreign ministers will agree to increase “non-lethal” support.
With regard to China, the NATO Secretary General stressed that this power “is not an adversary”, but “is intensifying its military modernization, increasing its presence from the Arctic to the Western Balkans, from space to cyberspace and seeking to control the world’s critical infrastructure.” allies in NATO.
Stoltenberg has warned that the war in Ukraine has shown a “dangerous dependence” on Russian gas and wants allies to assess their dependence “on other authoritarian regimes, mainly China.”
Also invited were the foreign ministers of Finland and Sweden, two countries that submitted a joint proposal for NATO membership in May this year, renouncing decades of military non-alignment, but the process of which has not yet been completed, without ratification by Turkey and Hungary.
Also present will be the foreign ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia and Moldova, as well as United States Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
The meeting is taking place in Romania, a country bordering Ukraine, where Portugal has a military presence within NATO.
In October, 166 Portuguese soldiers (2nd Separate National Detachment) traveled to Romania to participate in NATO’s “vigilance measures” aimed at assisting the Alliance’s deterrence and defense efforts on its southeastern flank.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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