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Britain calls Putin's invasion of Ukraine a major ‘strategic error’
The A news reported, the British foreign minister for Europe and North America said in Chicago this week that Russian President Vladimir Putin committed a major "strategic error" in believing his invasion of Ukraine would fragment Western democracies.
Instead, Foreign Office Minister James Cleverly said, Putin saw the NATO alliance and allied countries unite against Russian aggression in a sign of democracy's resilience.
"Democracy is messy. Democracy is untidy, and to an autocratic leader like Putin, it probably always looks as if it's on the verge of collapse," Cleverly, the British equivalent of U.S. secretary of state, said in an interview in Chicago with the Tribune on Wednesday (Apr 13).
"I think Putin read all the wrong lessons from the natural processes that liberal democracies go through — the elections, the criticism," Cleverly said. "He was clearly not listening to the people who should know better or didn't know better and pursued this ego-driven attack on Ukraine. And then, when the messy, untidy democracies of the liberal world saw what happened, instead of falling apart like he thought we would, we pull together because that's what we do."
Cleverly's visit to Chicago was part of a tour, which that also included stops in Washington, D.C., Missouri and Minnesota, aimed at solidifying the United Kingdom's preexisting relationships in an "really scary time" amid a backdrop of pandemic and war.
As to whether allied nations are doing enough to help Ukraine, Cleverly said, "We need to give the Ukrainians the tools to push back and push back hard against the Russian invasion so that Putin is forced to engage properly with peace talks in a way that at this moment, up until this point, he hasn't been."
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At the same time, Cleverly said, it was "incumbent upon us all to highlight to the Russian people the horrors that are being perpetrated in their name, that they don't know about, and they currently are being lied to systematically by their own national leadership."
"How this is resolved, ultimately, must be guided heavily by the Ukrainians. This is their nation. They are the ones who will decide when they would accept a peace settlement ... and what the terms are. They're the ones that will have to live with it," he said. "Zelensky is not going to roll over. He's not going to take a bad deal. We need to make sure, again echoing Winston Churchill, we need to give him the tools to get the job done."
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Cleverly said, but as the war in Ukraine continues, there also will be a price paid by the citizens of Western democracies over trying to rein in Russian aggression.
He said: "I think we need to recognize that there is a bill to be paid and we are seeing this across the Western world — food prices going up, gas prices are going up — and those increases are a direct result of Putin's invasion of Ukraine."
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He said: "Now, both in Washington and Westminster and in capital cities around the world, we're going to have to do whatever we can to try and mitigate those pressures to try and help people get to work and fill their shopping trolleys and that's not going to be easy. But the simple truth is that these pressures became inevitable the day that that war started."
Source: anews
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Amid growing anxiety among several European countries participating in NATO over Donald Trump's victory in the U.S. presidential election, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte stated he looks forward to sitting down with Trump.
Upon arriving to participate in the summit of the European Political Community, which includes around forty heads of state in Budapest, he said, "I look forward to sitting with the elected U.S. president and seeing how we will collectively ensure we meet challenges, including the threats from Russia and North Korea." He also noted that the strengthening of ties between Russia and North Korea poses a threat to the United States as well, according to reports from Agence France-Presse.
Before Trump's victory, Rutte expressed confidence that a united Washington would remain part of the defensive alliance, even if Trump became the 47th president of the United States. In an interview with German public broadcaster ZDF last Monday night, he stated that both Republicans and Democrats understand that NATO serves not only the security of Europe but also that of America. He added that both candidates are aware that the security of the United States is closely tied to NATO.
On Wednesday, NATO congratulated Trump on his victory but did not address the Ukrainian issue.
It is noteworthy that the relationship between the elected U.S. president and the defense alliance was not the best during his first term in the White House. Trump criticized NATO member states multiple times and even hinted at withdrawing from the alliance unless they increased their financial contributions.
Additionally, the issue of the Russian-Ukrainian war is one of the matters that complicate relations between the two sides, especially since Trump has repeatedly stated that he can end this ongoing conflict, which began in 2022, quickly. He implied that he had a peace plan between Kyiv and Moscow, while his vice president, JD Vance, revealed aspects of that plan, which stipulated Ukraine's commitment not to join NATO, thereby sending reassuring signals to the Russians.
Furthermore, many NATO member states in Europe fear that Trump might halt military aid to Ukraine after he previously criticized the U.S. for pouring funds into supporting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
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