We call on President Putin to end the war! NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg

We call on President Putin to end the war. He is responsible for starting the war and he has the responsibility to end the war. Because if Russia stops fighting, there will be peace. If Zelenskyy and Ukrainians stop fighting, Ukraine will cease to exist as an independent nation. So we are not speaking about in a way to equals. We have an aggressor, Russia and we have a country which is the victim of aggression, Ukraine. And that's also the reason why we are so clearly supporting Ukraine. With the illegal annexations of Ukrainian territory, it doesn't change the nature of this war. It remains a war of aggression by Russia against Ukraine.

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And of course, what we've seen over the last weeks or days is the most serious escalation of this conflict since the invasion on the 24th of February, because we have the combination of the mobilisation in Russia, combined with the reckless dangerous nuclear rhetoric, and then today's illegal annexation or attempt to annex parts of Ukraine. Together, this is the most serious escalation of the conflict since the start. And the aim of President Putin is to deter us from supporting Ukraine. But he will not succeed in that. The message from NATO Alliesand our partners is that we will continue to support. The United States just announced today, more support. And I spoke also with all our leaders over the last few days. And NATO leaders and they all have the same message, we need to stand united and need to provide support to Ukraine, because this is of course in the interest of Ukraine, and that we help them to defend themselves. But it's also in our interest that we ensure that President Putin doesn't win because if he wins the message is that authoritarian powers like Russia can use military force and then achieve their goals and that will make the whole world more dangerous.