Division widens, capacity depletes as NATO discusses boosting Ukraine aid to fan flames

The meeting of NATO foreign ministers on Tuesday will see fresh pledges of non-lethal support to Ukraine, as well as additional supplies of military equipment for Kiev, media reported. Chinese experts warned that the political correctness of NATO’s aid to Ukraine may have reached its limit and the divisions within NATO over Ukraine will continue to widen.

Kicking off a two-day meeting in Romania, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Ukraine will one day become a member, but adds the more immediate focus should be on arming Kyiv’s forces and supplying non-lethal aid as the winter bites, Aljazeera reported.

The US is also expected to announce “substantial” financial aid to Ukraine on Tuesday to help it deal with the damage caused by warfare on its energy infrastructure, the Guardian reported.

Even if the US-led NATO has the willingness to continue its aid to Ukraine, whether it has the ability to do so is another matter, said Cui Heng, an assistant research fellow at the Center for Russian Studies of East China Normal University.

NATO officials acknowledged that smaller countries have exhausted their potential to provide weaponry to Ukraine, with 20 of its 30 members “pretty tapped out,” the New York Times reported. The European Union has approved 3.1 billion euros ($3.2 billion) to repay member states for what they provided to Ukraine, but that fund, the European Peace Facility, is nearly 90 percent depleted, the report said.

Conflicts of interest among NATO member states over Ukraine are restricting further plan of the organization. “The appearance of unity can’t make up for the differences, and when the interests of all parties are difficult to bridge, the interests of some small countries will inevitably be sacrificed,” said Liu Zuokui, a Beijingbased expert on European affairs.