Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State referred to the conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza during his joint press conference with NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
“Accession of both Finland and Sweden was far from inevitable. In fact, if you go back a little over two years, no one was talking about it. But in the wake of Moscow’s renewed aggression against Ukraine, both countries felt that it was clearly in their interest to defend their people and defend their sovereignty by joining the Alliance. I think the process that we’ve seen in actually record time – first with Finland and now with Sweden – demonstrates that NATO’s door is open, remains open, including to Ukraine – which will become a member of NATO.
This also underscores one of the many ways in which Putin’s aggression against Ukraine has been an abject strategic failure for Russia, how it has in fact precipitated the very things that Putin sought to prevent. He wanted to shrink NATO; it is now larger and getting larger still. He wanted to weaken NATO; it is stronger than it’s ever been.
But in order to make sure that that continues, that all of us step up and do what’s necessary to continue to ensure that Ukraine knows success and Russia knows strategic failure, it is vital that Congress pass the supplemental budget request that the President has put before it.
We have been working to try to get hostages back out of Gaza and at the same time to get an extended pause in, and that effort is something that we are very, very actively pursuing right now with, of course, our partners in Qatar and Egypt as well as Israel. Those who are trying to expand the conflict, broaden the conflict, escalate the conflict, they may say that they’re doing that somehow in response to Gaza, but every action they’re taking really is to perpetuate the conflict and to expand it”, Blinken said.
