NATO boss Jens Stoltenberg, responding to accusations of Western double standards, said on Tuesday (November 28) that international law had to apply in all conflicts but the wars in Ukraine and Gaza were very different, Reuters reports.
Arab leaders have accused Western countries of failing to apply the same standards to Israel's war in Gaza, launched in response to the deadly Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas, as they have applied to Russia's war in Ukraine.
Speaking at the same press conference after a meeting of alliance foreign ministers, Stoltenberg said that the alliance partners needed to be clear-eyed about the impact of China's "coercive policies" on security.
Ministers will meet again on Thursday where they will be joined at talks by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
Kuleba joined a meeting of NATO foreign ministers on Wednesday (November 29) in Brussels.
The European union has delivered about 300,000 of its promised million shells to Ukraine so far, Kuleba said on the sidelines of the event.
He called for greater alignment of Ukraine's and NATO's defense industries to ensure Kyiv has the supplies it needs to defeat Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Kyiv has for the last several months engaged in a concerted drive to entice leading global arms manufacturers to set up operations in Ukraine, part of a bid to diversify its reliance on weapons and ammunition given by its allies.
The alliance's meeting -- attended by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and counterparts from Germany, Turkey and France among others -- aims to tackle how to keep up support to Ukraine and an upcoming summit in Washington next year.
