The coming weeks could be decisive for Ukraine, but they are unlikely to determine the outcome of the military conflict. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said this in an interview with Bloomberg.
The Minister stressed that, first of all, it is necessary to create a reliable and functional air defense system in Ukraine. According to him, this should be done in the next three months.
“The next few weeks will be very decisive for Ukraine, I think. Because, as we already learned from General Mark Milley a few months ago in Ramstein, in the fall, the priority for us is to ensure the air defense,” Pistorius said.
In October 2022, US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said that it would be difficult to create a rapidly modern integrated air defense system in Ukraine, this is a task for the future.
Responding to a question about the date of the end of the conflict in Ukraine, the minister said that making assumptions about it is like “looking into a crystal ball”. He said the fighting could last “at least two or three years” or could “end in the coming months”. Pistorius stressed that Germany would support Kiev for as long as necessary.
On January 20, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said the conflict in Ukraine was entering “a watershed moment for Ukraine and a watershed decade for the world.” The head of the US Department of Defense urged the allies not to “slow down” on the issue of assistance to Kiev and to seek new ways to implement it.
In mid-December 2022, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, 99, offered to establish a ceasefire line along the borders that existed at the start of the Russian military operation. If this cannot be achieved “by military means or by negotiations”, according to the politician, it is necessary to organize referendums of self-determination under international control “in particularly divisive territories which have changed hands several times times over the centuries”.
US billionaire George Soros later suggested that the conflict in Ukraine could end in “the collapse of the Russian empire”.
