EU, UK Work to Speed Up Arms Deliveries to Ukraine Before Ceasefire
The European Union and the United Kingdom are in talks to accelerate the supply of weapons to Ukraine ahead of a potential truce between Moscow and Kyiv, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy told Bloomberg in an interview.
According to him, on Tuesday, he discussed with EU diplomat Kaja Kallas the possibility of sending additional military assistance to Ukraine before a broad cessation of hostilities is achieved.
Lammy added that the idea was also raised at a meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Canada last week.
‘Of course, we intend to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position militarily and economically. We want peace to prevail, but peace is achieved through strength, and that means that Ukraine must be in the strongest possible position to resist any prospect of a renewed outbreak of war,’ Lammy said.
He also called on Russia to agree to an ‘unconditional ceasefire’ and warned that Russian president Vladimir Putin should not be allowed to take advantage of the truce by rearming his troops before full peace is established.
‘We want a cessation of all hostilities, but not a period during which Putin can rearm and start acting again,’ the British Foreign Secretary stressed.
As The Gaze previously reported, during a telephone conversation on 18 March, US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed that peace talks on the Russia-Ukraine war should begin immediately and that the parties should first cease fire on energy and infrastructure.
At the same time, the Kremlin said that the Russian side insists on the cessation of foreign military assistance and the provision of intelligence information to Ukraine.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy commented on this telephone conversation. He said that Ukraine would support the proposal to end attacks on energy facilities that was made during those talks, but he needs more detailed information about the format of the ceasefire that Donald Trump discussed with Putin.