Blinken condemns Putin’s attacks on civilians as “barbaric” and pledges continued support for Ukraine
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken strongly condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attacks on Ukrainian civilians, calling them “barbaric.” He also vowed that the United States and NATO allies will continue to support Kyiv in the face of Russian efforts to “split our coalition.”
“As Ukraine continues to build momentum on the battlefield, President Putin has focused his anger and fire on the civilian population of Ukraine,” Blinken said at a news conference Wednesday at the NATO foreign ministers meeting. in Bucharest. “In recent weeks, Russia has bombed more than a third of the Ukrainian energy system, plunging millions of people into the cold, into the dark, as freezing temperatures prevail.”
“Heating, water, electricity, for children, for the elderly, for the sick: these are President Putin’s new targets. He is hitting them hard,” the senior US diplomat said. “This brutalization of the Ukrainian people is barbaric.”
On Tuesday, the US government pledged more than $50 million worth of equipment to support Ukraine’s power system. Blinken said Wednesday that the equipment — generators, transformers, spare parts — would arrive in Ukraine “not in a matter of months, but in a matter of days, or weeks.”
Blinken said attacks on civilian infrastructure were part of Putin’s “playbook” to “freeze and starve Ukrainians, force them out of their homes,” drive up energy and food costs worldwide. world, “and then try to split our coalition.
“President Putin thinks that if he can raise costs high enough, the world will abandon Ukraine, which will leave them to fend for themselves. His strategy has not worked and will not work,” Blinken said.
The allies are aware that “defending Ukraine means accepting difficult costs,” Blinken said, “but the cost of inaction would be much higher.”
Blinken said diplomacy would be needed to completely end Russia’s war in Ukraine, but noted that “Russia’s savage attacks on Ukrainian civilians are the latest demonstration that President Putin currently has no interest in diplomatic significant”.
“The best way to really accelerate the prospects for real diplomacy is to maintain our support for Ukraine and continue to tilt the battlefield in their favor,” Blinken said. “That will also help ensure that Ukraine has the strongest possible negotiating position and hand to play when a negotiating table emerges.”
“Short of Russia putting an end to the aggression started, that is the only path to a peace that is just and lasting,” Blinken said.