Short remarks

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg:
Minister Kuleba, dear Dmytro,

Welcome to this foreign minister meeting of NATO Allies. It's great to see you again. 

And the message from the meeting today is that NATO Allies and partners, they are going to continue to support Ukraine. 

We will stand by Ukraine as long as it takes, we’ll not back down. And we realize that it is extremely important that President Putin is not able to win in Ukraine. That will be a tragedy for Ukraine. But it will also make the world more dangerous and us, more vulnerable. So it's in the security interest of NATO Allies to support Ukraine. 

Then also Allies agreed that we should work more closely with Ukraine, because what we have seen is that the support is actually making a huge difference on the battlefield every day. 

The gains that Ukrainians are making, of course, belong to the brave soldiers of Ukraine, but the support provided by NATO Allies, partners, the European Union is making a difference and that's the reason why we need to continue to provide more support. 

And last, I'll just say that we are all shocked by the indiscriminate attacks on Ukrainian cities, on Ukrainian infrastructure. We see that President Putin is trying to deprive Ukrainians of water, electricity, heating, light. President Putin is using winter as a weapon. He is weaponising winter.

That is just making it even more important to support Ukraine and also, of course, we're looking forward to meet you later on today and to discuss directly with you. 

So please, Dmytro, welcome.
 

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba:
Thank you, Jens. 

The last time I was invited to the NATO ministerial, I came with three words which were: weapons, weapons and weapons. 

And a lot has been done since then in helping Ukraine to equip our army with necessary weapons. And you've seen how we deliver. 

These weapons help us to liberate our territories, to save people from tortures and disregarding treatment by the Russian occupational forces. 

So I would like to thank you and the Alliance as a coordinating force that allowed necessary weapons to make it to Ukraine. 

Today, I have three different words, three other words which are: faster, faster and faster. 

We appreciate what has been done, but the war goes on. 

We proved that we can defeat Russia. 
We proved that we can win together in the interests of the entire Euro Atlantic space and the world, as you rightly mentioned. 

But decisions on weapons, decision on launching new production lines of weapons in Western countries, they have to be made faster. 
And deliveries of weapons have to make have to be done faster. 

And this is what we are discussing here today with ministers, how to speed up everything. 

And of course, I think it will be probably the first NATO ministerial where issues of energy security will be as important as of hard security. 

Yes, transformers, generators, and other equipment are very important. And in this sense, Comprehensive Assistance Package run by NATO and coordinated by the Secretary General is playing a very important role of this non-military assistance to Ukraine to help us get through the winter. 

So to cut story [short], we need air defence, IRIS, HAWKs, Patriots, and we need transformers. 

When we have transformers and generators, we can restore our system, our energy grid and provide people with decent living conditions which President Putin is trying to deprive them of. 

When we have air defence systems, we will be able to protect this infrastructure from the next Russian missiles strikes and they are definitely to come. Unfortunately, this is the reality that we have to prepare for. 

So in a nutshell, Patriots and transformers is what Ukraine needs the most and we're discussing it here in Bucharest at the NATO ministerial.  

Thank you.