Raimundas Karoblis: Ukraine Defends South-Eastern Flank of NATO and Western World

While curbing Russia’s aggression, Ukraine protects the south-eastern flank of NATO and the Western world.

Raimundas Karoblis, the Minister for National Defense of the Republic of Lithuania, stated this during the 11^th Kyiv Security Forum in Kyiv.

“Ukraine is now defending the south-eastern flank of NATO and the Western world,” he said.

He emphasized the importance of providing practical support to Ukraine, which ‘was hit by Russia’s revisionist policy’. “Russia wants to keep Ukraine in its sphere of influence and isolate it from the Euro-Atlantic course,” the head of the Lithuanian Defense Ministry stated.

The minister stressed that Ukraine was high on the list of priorities of Lithuania, and the official Vilnius shared Ukraine’s assessment of the regime in Moscow.

At the same time, R.Karoblis added that recently Europe and the U.S. ‘were beginning to wake up, realizing the real threat coming from Russia’: “The good news is that at last, the West has formed a certain solidarity and unity in relation to Russia”.

He emphasized that NATO was increasingly aware that ‘Russia posed a huge threat to European and world security and to the Western countries’.

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The annual international event Kyiv Security Forum was launched by the Arseniy Yatsenyuk Foundation Open Ukraine in 2007 as a platform for high-level discussions on the current issues in Europe and the Black Sea region. The Forum aims at increasing security cooperation between the EU and the Black Sea region, raising awareness about regional developments among key regional players, promoting the role of independent and non-governmental actors in setting the security agenda in Europe.

The event is being held with the support of NATO Information and Documentation Center in Ukraine, the German Marshall Fund, The Victor Pinchuk Foundation, The Royal Institute of International Relations, Chatham House (UK), and The Regional Representative Office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Ukraine.