UK defense secretary says Ukraine should be grateful, not treat allies like 'Amazon'
VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) - British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has raised some eyebrows by suggesting that Ukraine should appear more grateful for Western military support and not treat allies like "Amazon."
"Whether we like it or not, people want to see gratitude," Wallace told reporters at the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, noting that Ukraine was persuading other countries to give up their own stocks of weapons.
In comments cited by multiple British media outlets, including The Times of London, The Guardian and the Independent, Wallace said he had heard "grumbles" from lawmakers on Capitol Hill in Washington that "we're not Amazon."
"I mean, that's true," he was quoted as saying. "I told them that last June: I said to the Ukrainians when I drove 11 hours to be given a list: 'I'm not Amazon.'"
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's spokesman, Max Blain, downplayed the remarks.
"I think you have heard from President Zelenskyy repeatedly, and indeed today, about his gratitude to the people of the United Kingdom for their support and their generosity," he said, adding that "the U.K. government and the U.K. people will be steadfast in support" of Ukraine.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has welcomed the recent U.S. decision to send cluster munitions to his country, saying Russia also uses the controversial and widely banned weapons.
"Russia constantly uses cluster munitions on our territory. It wages war exclusively on our land. It kills our people," he said Wednesday at the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.
"This is about justice," Zelenskyy added. "We defend ourselves, without using (these) weapons on the territory of other states." Zelenskyy said. Any cluster munitions supplied to Ukraine, he said, would be used "purely for military purposes" and "purely" in Russian-occupied parts of southern and eastern Ukraine.
President Joe Biden earlier this week described the decision to provide the projectiles as "very difficult," citing their record of killing civilians. Over 120 countries across the world -- but not the U.S., Russia or Ukraine -- have signed on to an international convention prohibiting the production of cluster munitions and discouraging their use. Both Moscow and Kyiv have deployed the munitions during the war, and Ukrainian regional officials have regularly accused Russian forces of using them to target civilians.
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NATO and Ukraine are holding their first ever high-level talks in a new format.
The 31-nation alliance is not letting Ukraine join while the war with Russia is going on, but has launched a NATO-Ukraine Council as part of its political commitment to the country.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says it's "a forum where Ukraine and NATO allies will meet as equals, hold crisis consultations and jointly take decisions. Ukraine is now closer to NATO than ever before."
Hungary has blocked high-level talks with Ukraine in the past due to concerns over the rights of the ethnic Hungarian minority living in Ukraine. But Stoltenberg said he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy can convene the NATO-Ukraine Council, so it cannot be blocked.
"This is something new, this is something different. It's a strong tool for political integration, and also for decision-making," Stoltenberg said Wednesday before chairing the meeting.
Russia had a similar arrangement with NATO, but meetings dwindled after it annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Once the war started last year, the allies ruled that "NATO cannot consider Russia to be a partner."
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday praised NATO's decision to simplify Ukraine's path to eventual membership and hailed new security guarantees and military aid for his country emerging from the alliance summit.
"The results of the summit are good, but if there were an invitation, that would be ideal," Zelenskyy said at a press briefing with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in Vilnius, Lithuania. A day earlier, he tweeted that it was "absurd" that NATO hadn't set a timetable for Ukrainian membership.
He welcomed the alliance's move to drop the requirement for Kyiv to submit a formal membership action plan prior to joining as "an important step." NATO said Tuesday Ukraine could join when "allies agree and conditions are met."
Zelenskyy also lauded "very positive news" regarding new military aid packages from NATO countries. He met with leaders of the alliance on Wednesday, without immediately providing details.
The Ukrainian leaders thanked Western backers for their ongoing support, but suggested they don't fully understand the realities of war that Ukraine has been facing since Russian forces invaded in February last year.
NATO members have taken steps to expedite Ukraine's membership once the war is over.
"The most important thing is to have results, so that we can see concrete steps that bring us closer to NATO," Zelenskyy said.
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The Kremlin considers plans by G7 nations to offer Ukraine security guarantees "extremely ill-judged and potentially very dangerous," spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday.
Britain issued a statement a day earlier on plans by the G7 - made up of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States - to agree Wednesday to a "significant international framework for Ukraine's long-term security arrangements."
A joint statement expected to be signed by G7 members on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Lithuania would mark the first time "that this many countries have agreed a comprehensive long-term security arrangement of this kind with another country," the British government said.
Countries providing security guarantees to Ukraine "essentially ignore the international principle of indivisibility of security," Peskov said: "By providing security guarantees to Ukraine, they're infringing on Russia's security."
"We consider this extremely ill-judged and potentially very dangerous," he said.
Peskov also reiterated Russia's longstanding opposition to Ukraine's potential membership in NATO, calling it "an offensive alliance" that "brings instability and aggression" to the world.
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China has renewed its concern about NATO's eastward "expansion" as the alliance wraps up its summit in Lithuania on Wednesday.
A joint communique from the Atlantic alliance a day earlier said China's "stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values," while indicating that NATO members "remain open to constructive engagement" with Beijing.
China issued a strong rebuttal, saying it would "resolutely safeguard its sovereignty, security and development interests, and it resolutely opposes NATO's eastward expansion into the Asia-Pacific."
"NATO has a bad track record in history," China's diplomatic mission to the European Union in Brussels said in a statement, faulting NATO for "meddling in affairs beyond its borders, and creating confrontation."
"This fully exposes NATO's hypocrisy and its ambition of seeking expansion and hegemony," it added, calling the NATO statement "tedious" and saying it was "playing the same old tune, filled with Cold War mentality and ideological bias."
Like Russia, China has long voiced concerns that NATO has been on an eastward expansion, with both the vice foreign minister, Le Yucheng, and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying referring to what they perceived as a continual expansion of the alliance.
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Hungary has welcomed a NATO decision to bring Ukraine closer to the military alliance without receiving a clear path for joining it, saying Wednesday that a "sense of responsibility" had prevailed at a summit where Kyiv had hoped for more concrete assurances for NATO membership.
Speaking in an interview on the sidelines of the summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said that providing no invitation or timeline for Ukraine's NATO membership was the "only responsible decision" that NATO could take in light of the ongoing war - and one that Kyiv would have to settle for despite its broader hopes.
"A decision has been taken that does not risk escalating the war," Szijjarto said. "The member states have made it clear that Ukraine will be invited to join NATO only if it fulfils all the conditions and if the allies unanimously agree to this."
Szijjarto also urged NATO not to become an "anti-China" alliance, and said cooperation with China was as economically advantageous as partnerships with countries like South Korea and Japan.
"NATO should not be given an anti-China edge, so let's make it clear that NATO is not an anti-China organization," Szijjarto said. "It was not created against China, and its current operation is not against China. We do not see China as a risk, we do not see it as an adversary or an enemy."
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says issues including new military aid for Ukraine, a formal invitation for his country to join NATO, and security guarantees from its member states were on tap at second and final day of the alliance's summit on Wednesday.
The comments from the Ukrainian leader came a day after NATO member countries eased the pathway for Ukraine to join one day but stopped short of providing a specific timetable for an invitation that Zelenskyy has sought for Ukraine.
"We want to be on the same page with everybody. For today, what we hear and understand is that we will have this invitation (to join NATO) when security measures will allow, I want to discuss with our partners all these things," Zelenskyy told reporters in the Lithuanian capital.
A post published on Zelenskyy's official Twitter account said he had met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine "on its way to NATO."
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain, which has provided considerable military support to Kyiv, told Zelenskyy that the efforts of Ukraine's soldiers against Russian forces were "inspiring to everyone. We're proud to have played a part in training some of them."
NATO members have long proposed that Ukraine could join one day, but Tuesday's decision shows the challenges of reaching consensus among the alliance's current members while Russia's war in Ukraine continues.
Under Article 5 of the NATO charter, members are obligated to defend each other from attack, which could swiftly draw the U.S. and other nations into direct fighting with Russia.