NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking at a panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference, said that “the war in Ukraine has demonstrated that there are some serious gaps,” while Volodymyr Zelensky says that supply shortages prompted the withdrawal of troops from Avdiivka.
Christiane Amanpour, a British-Iranian journalist and television host, asked the NATO Secretary General about NATO’s capabilities in the conflict against Russia, highlighting that NATO does not have “enough to do what you need to do in Ukraine, much less if you were to confront Russia, and you’ve said that if he steps on your territory, every single inch will be defended.”
Jens Stoltenberg responded as follows: “NATO is the strongest military power in the world today. We represent 50 per cent roughly of the world’s total military might. And militarily, we are stronger than Russia. But at the same time, I think the war in Ukraine has demonstrated that there are some serious gaps. For instance, when it comes to sustainment, it’s one thing to have all the advanced weapons systems, but they need spare parts, they need maintenance, and obviously they need ammunition. And in the beginning of the war in Ukraine, we depleted our stocks, but now they are running quite low. So now we are focusing extremely, on how to ramp up production. We have some good news. There are new factories being set up. Production has increased but there’s an urgent need to do more.”
In the meantime, the Ukrainian military said it was withdrawing its troops from Avdiivka because it had nothing to defend itself with, and the 10-to-one man to man ratio leaves the Ukrainian defence without any chance.
Volodymyr Zelensky, for his part, speaking at the Munich Security Conference, stressed that during the nearly two-year war, Ukraine has shifted back to defence against Russia, hampered by low ammunition supplies and a shortage of personnel.
“Our actions are limited only by the sufficiency and length of range of our strength,” he said, commenting on why Avdiivka was left by the Ukrainian military.
The Ukrainian president said the withdrawal was “a correct decision” and emphasised that the priority was to save the lives of Ukrainian soldiers but noted that “keeping Ukraine in the artificial deficit of weapons, particularly in the deficit of artillery and long-range capabilities, allows Putin to adapt to the current intensity of the war.”
