Finnish PM: Europe not strong enough to face Russia, not without US
3 Min Read
In her visit to Australia, Marin spoke about European capabilities regarding the war in Ukraine.
-
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin. (Reuters)
Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin offered a "brutally honest" assessment of Europe's capabilities amid the war in Ukraine on Friday, asserting that "we're not strong enough" to face Moscow alone.
Marin exposed Europe's weaknesses in her visit to Australia, in addition to Europe's strategic errors within the context of the war.
"I must be very honest, brutally honest with you, Europe isn't strong enough right now. We would be in trouble without the United States," she told Sydney's Lowy Institute think tank.
The Finnish Prime Minister insisted that Ukraine must be provided with "whatever it takes" to win the war, adding that the United States has had an integral role in supplying Ukraine with weapons, in addition to the necessary finances and humanitarian aid.
"We have to make sure that we are also building those capabilities when it comes to European defense, the European defense industry, and making sure that we could cope in different kinds of situations," she said.
Furthermore, Marin criticized EU policies that emphasized the importance of engaging with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"We should have listened to our Baltic and Polish friends much sooner," Marin said, referring to said countries' advocacy for taking a more hardline stance against Moscow.
"For a long time, Europe was building a strategy towards Russia to closen our economic ties, to buy energy from Russia... we thought that this would prevent a war," Marin said, adding that this approach has been "proven entirely wrong."
Read next: Finland's Gasum to pay Russia's Gazprom $311mln for breach of contract
"They don't care about economic ties, they don't care about the sanctions. They don't care about any of that."
US running low on weapons, munition to give Ukraine
The United States is running low on several sophisticated weapons and munition to send to Ukraine in the midst of the ongoing war, CNN reported in mid-November citing three US officials familiar with the matter.
One of the officials said the stockpiles of certain systems were "dwindling" after Washington spent the past nine months supplying Ukraine with arms against Russia due to there being a "finite amount" of available stocks in the US arsenal that it is able to send, the report said.
The United States, the sources said, is mainly concerned about meeting Ukraine's demands for 155mm artillery ammunition and man-portable Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.
Meanwhile, some of the sources told CNN that there was concern regarding the US' ability to produce additional weapons systems that Ukraine is demanding, such as the HARMs anti-radiation missiles, GLMRS SSM, and the shoulder-mounted Javelin anti-tank missiles, which Kiev has been highly reliant on since the beginning of the war.
