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New NATO Secretary-General, Mark Rutte has visited Ukraine on Thursday in his first official trip since taking office while also pledging the NATO alliance’s continued support for Kyiv in its war with Russia.
Rutte had also met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv as the air raid sirens twice went off in the Ukrainian capital.
The new head of NATO vowed when he took office on Tuesday to help shore up Western support for Ukraine, which has been fighting Russia’s full-scale invasion since February 2022 and has for most of this year been on the defensive due to a relentless Russian army push in the country’s eastern regions.
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Rutte expressed confidence that he can work with whomever is elected president of the United States, the alliance’s most powerful member, in November. That could be a key moment for Ukraine’s effort to ensure continuing Western support.
Zelenskyy said he discussed with Rutte elements of Ukraine’s so-called victory plan, ahead of a NATO meeting at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany next week. The gathering draws together defense leaders from the 50-plus partner nations who regularly meet to coordinate weapons aid for the war.
In other news, On Thursday, the Israeli military issued a warning for residents to leave a city and other areas in southern Lebanon located north of a U.N.-declared buffer zone. This indicates a potential expansion of the ground operation initiated earlier this week targeting the Hezbollah militant group.
Israel has told people to leave Nabatieh, a provincial capital, and other communities north of the Litani River, which formed the northern edge of the border zone established by the U.N. Security Council after the two sides fought a war in 2006. Each side accuses the other of violating the resolution.
