‘West must arm Ukraine to keep Russia from future global adventures’

United Nations, Nov 12: Latvia’s president says Russia is planning for a long war in Ukraine and he has a message for countries wavering on continuing military support to Kyiv: Keep supplying arms or the Ukrainians will lose and Russia will have a green light for threatening others in the future.
Edgars Rinkevics said in an interview with The Associated Press that “it is important to actually fight for international peace, and peace in Europe, because if we stop Russia in Ukraine, then Russia is not going to be able to challenge other countries.” He pointed to the disruptive role that Russia’s Wagner mercenary group is playing in Africa and to Russian meetings with officials from Hamas, the Gaza Strip’s ruling militants whose surprise attack in Israel on October 7 killed some 1,200 people.
In July, Rinkevics was sworn in as president of Latvia, which was part of the Soviet Union until its break-up in August 1991. The Baltic nation, population 1.9 million, in 2004 joined both the European Union and NATO, holding a key point on their eastern flank with its 214-kilometre border with Russia.
Rinkevics, who was Latvia’s foreign minister for 13 years before being elected president, said that despite some members of the 27-nation EU having “their opinions,” at the end of the day the alliance has agreed on sanctioning Russia and on providing more support to Ukraine over Russia’s February 2022 invasion.
“Interestingly enough, at this point, the EU is more divided when it comes to the Middle East, rather than to Ukraine,” he said in Thursday’s interview.
He said it is important for the West to support both Ukraine and Israel against attacks on “our values” and the international order. He also stressed the need to push for humanitarian pauses in the Gaza fighting to provide assistance to Palestinian civilians, whose death toll in Israel’s retaliation for the Hamas attack has topped 11,000, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Rinkevics said Iran is “very pleased to see this kind of development in the Middle East,” and pointed to Tehran’s supply of arms and other equipment to Russia for its fight in Ukraine.
It’s in NATO’s security interests “that both cases are viewed the same way,” he said. “I do believe also that it will be much easier for us to keep peace in Europe if Ukraine succeeds rather than we let Ukraine down, or for that matter, also to let the situation in the Middle East to get out of control.” Rinkevics said Ukrainian soldiers are fighting “in a very brave way” and the West has the responsibility to respond to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s appeal for more weapons, “because we have not provided as much as we should have.” He said Russia is mobilising its economy, resources and military machinery “for a very long war.” It tried to win the war quickly and realised it can’t, and now Moscow wants to “strangle” Ukraine, he said, predicting it will reprise attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in the coming months, as it did last winter. (AP)