At least one more week Sweden will have to wait for the official accession to NATO. The platform in the North Atlantic Alliance may be ready, but Hungary, despite statements to the contrary, has recently held back on ratification of membership and bureaucratic issues have arisen since the resignation of the country’s president and the change of baton.
This week, the deposit of the sanction to the depositary, i.e. in Washington, does not seem likely, while the newly elected Hungarian President Tamas Suliok officially takes office on March 5. Following this, Sweden’s flag is expected to be flown as the 32nd at NATO headquarters in Brussels from 6 March onwards, despite repeated messages from Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to complete the process as soon as possible.
The Budapest ratification last Monday, March 26 was preceded by a visit to Sweden by Viktor Orbán. Viktor Orban and his counterpart Ulf Kristerson “shake hands” and Hungary acquired four Swedish Gripen fighters.
At the same time, an alarm sounded after Emmanuel Macron’s statements about the possible dispatch of ground troops to Ukraine. “There is no consensus today on the dispatch of ground troops in an official, acceptable and approved manner,” the French president noted, stressing, however, that “nothing should be ruled out. We will do whatever it takes to ensure that Russia cannot win this war.”
The rejection of such a possibility was instantaneous. “NATO allies are providing unprecedented support to Ukraine. We have been doing this since 2014 and have grown since the widespread invasion. But there are no plans for NATO military troops on the ground in Ukraine,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg clarified to the Associated Press agency, while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz explained that based on the existing agreement “there will be no ground troops, nor soldiers on Ukrainian soil to be sent there by European or NATO states.”
The Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, was also clear, who assured that “there is no question of sending forces, European NATO forces, inside Ukraine. An issue that does not exist for Greece and I believe that it does not exist for the great majority of our bonds”. However, the Kremlin threatened a direct conflict in such a possibility, with Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, stating that “in this case, we should not talk about possibilities, but about the inevitability (of the conflict)”.
And while this “dispute” was going on, Kiev called for ammunition, with Volodymyr Zelensky throwing the ball at the EU for not keeping its promises. “Of the millions of shells promised to us by the European Union, not 50% came, but 30%, unfortunately,” Zelensky told reporters at a press conference with Bulgarian Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov in Kiev.
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