The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland have warned against a "policy of concessions" towards Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Russia's military invasion of Ukraine has proved that such a policy was "naive", Annalena Burbock and her colleagues Stefan Sejourne and Radoslaw Sikorski said in a joint article on NATO's 75th anniversary published in Politico magazine.
"We must not allow any 'grey areas' because Putin sees them as an invitation to undermine territorial integrity and sovereignty, to draw imaginary lines on a map and, ultimately, to use military force," the foreign ministers of the so-called Weimar Triangle stressed.
They warned that Putin would not be satisfied with Ukraine:
"We must not fool ourselves. Today, Ukraine is under attack – tomorrow it may be some other part of Europe," the document says.
Russia will not abandon its "aggressive and imperialist policy" in the near future, the heads of diplomatic missions said.
The ministers stressed that support for Ukraine will continue "as long as it takes and as intensively as necessary". They recalled that Europe and the United States have supported Ukraine's self-defence by providing more than €200 billion in aid, with the EU and its member states providing two-thirds of this amount.
The ministers assured that European allies should "bear their fair share of NATO's collective burden" and spend at least 2% of their GDP on defence. They also need to constantly upgrade their weapons, and national defence companies will need "binding long-term contracts" and "governmental procurement guarantees", the article says.
Background. As reported, the Czech Republic is asking other NATO countries to allocate more money for the purchase of shells for Ukraine.