NATO is working to increase air defense for Ukraine - Stoltenberg

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday, April 18, that NATO is working to send more air defense systems to Ukraine. He told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of G7 foreign ministers in Italy, UNN reports.

Now we have encouraging reports, signs from the US Congress that in the coming days they will vote on a $61 billion package for Ukraine. ...We've gathered data on the various air defense systems that we have in NATO and focused on the Patriot systems. And we are working with allies to make sure that they redeploy some of their systems to Ukraine.

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Stoltenberg also said that Ukraine could be provided with other defense systems, including the NASAMS anti-aircraft missile system.

NATO is working hard to ensure that Ukraine is protected. He also added that delays in providing such assistance hurt Kyiv's efforts to counter the advancing Russians.

So now we need to provide a more robust and institutionalized support structure for Ukraine, and we are discussing how we can establish that within NATO in the near future, combined with a significant multi-year financial pledge period, because we need predictable, we need reliable, we need long-term support for Ukraine to ensure that we fill the gaps and provide more support to Ukraine.

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Earlier, Stoltenberg announcedthat a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council will take place on Friday. It is expected that the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be virtually present.