Remarks

So Minister Kuleba, dear Dmytro,
Welcome back to NATO.
It’s always a pleasure to welcome you, to see you here.

And let me start by once again recognising the courage, the determination, the bravery of the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and you personally in standing up against Russian brutal aggression against Ukraine.

This matters for Ukraine, but it matters also for the whole of NATO, for our security.
So what you do is important for all of us.

And therefore, I stated many, many times that support to Ukraine is not charity.
Support to Ukraine is an investment in our own security.
Today, we will have a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council.
I look forward to discussing with you how we can further strengthen our cooperation, but also how we can move you towards membership in NATO.
Allies have made clear that Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance.
And we need to ensure that is something we are following up.

We'll also discuss, as we also did at the Foreign Ministerial meeting yesterday, how we can step up and sustain our support for Ukraine.
Because it also matters for our own security.
And we are discussing how we can create a more robust and predictable framework, institutionalised framework for NATO support to Ukraine.
99% of the military support to Ukraine is coming from NATO Allies.
But we need to ensure that this is predictable.
It's fair burden sharing.
And that it's going to last. And therefore, we are looking into even stronger ways of organising the support.
And also to discussing a long term financial pledge, commitment from NATO Allies.

We of course welcome voluntary contributions.
But in the long run, we need to be less dependent on voluntary contributions short term and more dependent on strong NATO commitments.
These and many other issues we will discuss.
Once again, it’s great to see you here and welcome to NATO.