BUCHAREST, Romania — North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials on Tuesday emphasized their commitment to eventually allowing Ukraine to become a member of the military alliance. But they spent the first day of the two-day summit focusing on a more pressing concern: helping the nation rebuild its power grid crippled by relentless Russian air strikes.
Over the past eight months, the United States and its allies have provided billions of dollars in aid to help Ukraine fend off a Russian invasion, much of it in the form of weapons. Now, with millions of Ukrainians facing the prospect of a heat-free winter, the discussion is focusing as much on transformers, circuit breakers and surge arresters as on tanks and artillery. troops and air defense systems.
On Tuesday, US officials pledged to provide Ukraine with $53 million for grid repairs and sought to lobby other allies to make similar offers.
The pledge of aid came as diplomats from more than 30 countries gathered in Bucharest, Romania, where the NATO secretary general made clear that the alliance could one day expand to include Ukraine. The school was opposed by Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.
“The door of NATO is open,” said Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of NATO.
But for now, he said, war must be the focus.
“NATO will continue to support Ukraine as long as there is time,” Stoltenberg said. “We will not back down.”
Western officials say the reconstruction of Ukraine should be seen as a second front in the war. The US commitment came Tuesday from Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken at a meeting of the Group of Seven and several other partner countries, on the sidelines of the Summit. a two-day conference of NATO foreign ministers.
In Ukraine, when the temperature dropped, millions of people died live without electricity and water.
The Russian military has launched a series of missiles and drones to attack the country’s transmission network, including high-voltage substations, which are more vulnerable than power plants. A senior US official estimates that 25 to 30 percent of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been damaged, although Ukrainian officials have put the figure much higher in recent days.
In April, not long after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, American officials convened dozens of allies to provide long-term military aid to Ukraine, and organize member states. Ukraine Defense Contact Group.
Now US officials want to do much the same on the infrastructure front.
The Americans are organizing a working group to help Ukraine repair energy equipment and better protect its power plants and grid from attack. Negotiations started earlier this month at a meeting of foreign ministers of the Group of Seven in Münster, Germany.
The energy “contact group” focuses on those countries and their close partners, and is expected to meet again next month in Paris.
The State Department said the $53 million announced Tuesday will be used to purchase a range of equipment, including distribution transformers and circuit breakers. A senior agency official said the US government plans to buy equipment and ship it to Ukraine, focusing first on what can be shipped there fastest. The official said the Biden administration has identified $30 million worth of equipment that could be sent, including from the Department of Energy’s stockpile.
“This equipment will be quickly shipped to Ukraine in an emergency to help the Ukrainian people persevere through the winter,” the State Department said. statement.
The US$53 million pledge is in addition to the US$55 million in emergency assistance in the energy sector for generators and other equipment that the US has promised Ukraine, the ministry said.
Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, told reporters in Bucharest, where he is also attending the NATO meeting, that both electrical equipment and means of protecting infrastructure are important and urgently needed.
“When we have transformers and generators, we can restore our energy systems, our energy grid and provide people with good living conditions, which President Putin is trying to do,” he said. deprive them. “Once we have an air defense system, we will be able to protect this infrastructure from further Russian missile attacks, and they will certainly come. Unfortunately, this is the reality for which we must prepare.”
American and European officials argue that Moscow is trying to demoralize Ukrainians by depriving them of basic utilities during the winter. It adopted the tactic after the Russian army began to suffer big failure in recent months, including the forced retreat from the southern city Kherson and the Kharkiv region in the northeast.
NATO countries so far provide about 40 billion dollars arms supply to Ukraine, roughly the size of France’s annual defense budget. But Ukraine has torn stockpiles, sparking a scramble to give the country what it needs while also replenishing NATO members’ arsenals. Many howitzers are made in the West is breaking because it is heavily used by the Ukrainian military.
Officials also discussed how to better protect NATO member states closest to Ukraine, including Poland and Romania, from any potential contagion from the conflict. The topic took on more urgency this month when a missile that NATO leaders said appeared to have been launched. shot down by the Ukrainian air defense system killed two civilians in southeastern Poland.
It was at the NATO summit also in Bucharest, in 2008, that President George W. Bush was forced to adopt a controversial promise that Ukraine and Georgia would join the alliance one day, though not. It’s clear when. Germany and France protested, saying the promise was an unnecessary provocation to Russia.
Four months later, Putin ordered Russian troops to invade Georgia, and some analysts have argued that Putin has been trying ever since to ensure that the oath extends to the countries of the former Soviet Union. of NATO is meaningless.
On Tuesday, recalling the 2008 summit, Mr. Stoltenberg said: “We stand by those decisions. NATO’s door is wide open.”
However, Ukraine will almost certainly not join the alliance anytime soon, despite its long-standing ambition to do so. Recognizing a country requires the unanimous consent of all NATO members and the alliance – based on the doctrine of common defense – is highly unlikely to admit a country has been at war.
Tuesday’s meeting was also attended by the foreign ministers of Sweden and Finland, both of whom applied to join NATO after Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February.
In London on Tuesday, in a speech to British lawmakers, Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, called on the world to hold Russia accountable for atrocities in Ukraine. She said Ukrainians have documented thousands of war crimes committed by Russia and called for the creation of an international court to prosecute them.
Constantly citing World War II, Ms. Zelenska recalls that 80 years ago in London, the Allies signed the declaration that became the basis for the Nuremberg trials, bringing out many of the perpetrators of Nazi war crimes. before justice.
“Winning is not the only thing we need,” she said. “We need justice.”
Emma Bubola Contribution reports from London.
