Munich (dpa) – At the Munich Security Conference, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has emphatically warned against softening NATO’s commitment to joint defence. “Any relativisation of NATO’s mutual defence guarantee will only benefit those who, just like Putin, want to weaken us,” he said in his speech on Saturday. Scholz also called upon the EU partners to provide more financial assistance for Ukraine. He said that Germany had nearly doubled its military support to more than seven billion euros and had pledged a further six billion in aid.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy spoke immediately after Scholz. “2024 expects a reaction from us all,” he said. Ukraine has already held out against Russia for 724 days, he explained. “Our resistance has prevented the destruction of the rules-based world.” He added however that the longer the war lasted, the greater would be the danger of its widening and of further damage to the international order. “If we do not act now, Putin will manage to make the next years catastrophic.”
Yulia Navalnaya had already taken to the conference stage on Friday – shortly after the first reports of the death of her husband, Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny. “If it is really true, then I want Putin and everyone around him, his friends and his government, to know that they will be held accountable for what they have done to our country, to my family and to my husband.”
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