FRANKFURT: President European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has said that Ukraine had unconditional support from the body and that Ukraine needed to prevail against Russian attacks to defend the European values.
The statement comes ahead of an EU-Ukraine summit next week.
“We stand by Ukraine’s side without any ifs and buts,” Ursula von der Leyen said in a speech at a party event, the Christian Democrat CDU, in Duesseldorf, Germany.
Ukraine “is fighting for our shared values, it is fighting for the respect of international laws and for the principles of democracy and that is why Ukraine has to win this war,” she added.
European Union commissioners plan
Von der Leyen and her fellow EU commissioners plan an EU-Ukraine summit on February 3. President Joe Biden had recently promised 31 Abrams tanks, one of the sophisticated and most powerful weapons in the US army, to help Kyiv fight off Russia’s invasion.
North Korea has slammed US decision to supply Ukraine with tanks, claiming the US is “further expanding the proxy war” to destroy Russia.
Russia, along with China, is one of the North’s few international friends and has previously come to Ukraine’s aid. The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Kim Yo Jong in a statement, blamed the US for the crisis in Ukraine, as she accused it of “further crossing the red line” by sending Abrams tanks.
Washington is “the arch criminal”, she said and added Pyongyang will “always stand in the same trench with the service personnel and people of Russia.” “The world would be brighter, safer and calmer now if it were not for the US,” she said.
Other than Russia and Syria, North Korea is the only country to recognize the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, the two Russian-backed separatist regions in the eastern Ukraine.
Russia, which is one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, has long maintained the line against increasing pressure on North Korea, and even asked for relief from international sanctions on humanitarian grounds.
In September 2022, Kim Jong Un declared North Korea an “irreversible” nuclear state. North Korea conducted sanctions-busting weapons tests nearly every month in 2022 — including firing its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile.
