Borrell on Russia’s use of Iranian drones: We are gathering evidence and ready to respond
Supporting Ukraine in its fight against brutal Russian aggression remains a key priority for the EU. Currently, member states are gathering evidence of Russia’s use of Iranian-made drones and will be ready to respond.
This was stated today in Luxembourg during the press conference following the results of the Council of Ministers of the EU on Foreign Affairs, the high representative of the EU, Josep Borrell, Censor.NET reports with reference to Ukrinform.
"I want to make it clear that supporting Ukraine in the face of this brutal (Russian) invasion remains our priority, the EU's priority. Putin will lose. He will lose politically and morally. Yet he continues to escalate, including indiscriminate attacks against civilian targets throughout Ukraine, which we saw again this morning," Borrell said.
He noted that the ministers spoke for the first time today with their Ukrainian colleague, who was in the bomb shelter at the time.
"We had the opportunity to exchange views with the Minister of (Foreign Affairs of Ukraine - ed.) Dmytro Kuleba, who communicated with the ministers from the bomb shelter. I think this is the first time when we communicated with the minister who spoke to us from the bomb shelter, at that time as Russia continued to strike Kyiv," said a high-ranking EU representative.
According to him, today the ministers also considered the issue of Russia's possible use of Iranian-made drones to attack Ukraine.
"During the communication with the ministers, Minister Kuleba strongly condemned the use of such weapons. We are closely monitoring the use of these drones. We are collecting evidence of such use, and will be ready to respond using the tools at our disposal," Borrell emphasized.
He recalled the results of the vote during the session of the UN General Assembly last week regarding the condemnation of Russia's illegal annexation of the territories of Ukraine.
"This vote confirmed the international isolation of Russia. But we cannot take it for granted. We need to stick to our course, based on a three-pronged strategy: to support Ukraine, to put pressure on Russia and to overcome the consequences of this war, which affect the whole world," Borrell emphasized .
He reminded that today the EU Council of Ministers decided to allocate another tranche of 500 million euros of financial aid from the intergovernmental European Peace Fund for the purchase of weapons and military equipment for Ukraine. This tranche brought the amount of military aid from the EU to the Armed Forces of Ukraine to 3.1 billion euros, which, according to Borrell, is only the "tip of the iceberg" given the level of support Ukraine receives from EU countries on a bilateral level.
Another practical decision of the EU Council of Ministers was the establishment of the EU Military Assistance Mission EUMAM Ukraine, which is only initially designed to train up to 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers, will be stationed in several EU countries outside of Ukraine, and has a two-year mandate.
