Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s prime minister, speaks on day two of the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024.
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MUNICH, Germany — The West is suffering a “colossal failure of imagination” in thinking Russia’s war in Ukraine will not hit them next, European policymakers have been told amid calls for a doubling down of transatlantic support for Kyiv.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen criticized a waning sense of urgency among delegates at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday as Moscow’s full-scale offensive nearly enters its third year.
“The sense of urgency is simply not clear enough in our discussions,” Frederiksen told a lunchtime session. “We have to speed up and we have to scale up.”
Frederiksen called out Europe’s claims of production constraints as a reason for failing to provide more military assistance to Ukraine, noting that the continent has existing stockpiles it could and should share.
“This is not only a question about production because we have weapons, we have ammunitions, we have air defense that we don’t have to use ourselves at the moment, that we should deliver to Ukraine,” she said.
Denmark has now donated its entire artillery to Ukraine, Frederiksen said, urging other countries to do the same as the war marks its second anniversary on Feb. 24.
“On Saturday, there should be new deliveries,” she said. “Words will not solve this situation.”
He [Putin] will draft Ukrainians into his army to attack us.
Radosław Sikorski
foreign minister of Poland
Frederiksen’s sentiment was echoed by others in the room. The policymakers were speaking at the 7th Munich Ukrainian Lunch, hosted on the sidelines of the MSC by the Yalta European Strategy (YES) forum and Ukrainian non-profit the Victor Pinchuk Foundation. Sweden’s Foreign Minister Tobias Billström said countries must give Ukraine “what we already have.”
The comments came hours after Ukrainian troops withdrew from the eastern city of…
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