Remarks

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg:  

Secretary Austin, dear Lloyd, welcome once again back to NATO. It's always a pleasure to have you here and thank you for your leadership, your personal commitment to NATO, to the Transatlantic Alliance and not least for everything you have done to mobilize support for Ukraine. We met this morning in the Contact Group, Defense Contact Group for Ukraine, and the support, the security assistance, the training and everything that group has done to help Ukraine prevail has been really critical and you have been really the man that has made this possible.

So we are all extremely grateful for what you have done for NATO and for Ukraine, in particular over the last few years. We will meet now in the NATO Ukraine Council, there we will address both Ukraine's immediate needs for more support, in particular air defense and ammunition and I welcome the agreement in the United States on a supplemental for Ukraine, but also the fact that European Allies and Canada are stepping up with significant additional support to Ukraine.

But we'll also in the NATO Ukraine Council, and tomorrow at the Defence Minister meeting of NATO address how to establish an even stronger, institutionalized framework to ensure the support for Ukraine for the long haul and that includes also financial pledge, multi-year financial pledge to Ukraine. So there are many issues to be discussed. I look forward to sit down with you and thank you once again for your leadership and your commitment.