Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko says several members of the US-led North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are to provide Kiev government with
both lethal and non-lethal military equipment to help it fight off
pro-Russia forces in eastern Ukraine.
Speaking at a press conference following the first day of a summit of
the Western military alliance in Newport, Wales, on Thursday,
Poroshenko stated that some NATO members would cooperate with Ukraine on
"non-lethal and lethal military items."The details are as yet unreleased as the Ukrainian president did not specify which countries were involved and whether it would include direct arms supplies.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Thursday that it is up to individual members of the military alliance to decide whether to supply arms to Ukraine.
"NATO as an alliance is not involved in delivery of equipment, because we do not possess military capabilities. These are possessed by individual allies, so such decisions are national decisions and we are not going to interfere with that," Rasmussen said.Former Polish President Lech Walesa has warned against European military assistance to Ukraine, underlining that such a measure could trigger a nuclear war between Russia and NATO.
Ukraine’s mainly Russian-speaking regions in the east have witnessed deadly clashes between pro-Moscow forces and the Ukrainian army since Kiev launched military operations to silence pro-Russians in mid-April.
Violence intensified in May after the two flashpoint regions of Donetsk and Luhansk held local referendums, in which their residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence from Ukraine.
Western powers and the Kiev government accuse Moscow of having a hand in the crisis in eastern Ukraine, but the Kremlin denies the accusation.
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