“Time Is of the Essence:” Ambassador on Supporting Ukraine

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: The president of Ukraine did address it, the summit, your summit. I mean, it was behind closed doors. We understand, because I think he put it out on his Facebook, that he didn’t do his usual ask for a no-fly zone and the like. But he did ask for other things. And he also said, we have shown that in one month of resisting the third biggest army in the world, we are NATO-ready. How did you take what he was saying?

JULIANNE SMITH, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO NATO: I thought it was a really interesting argument. He’s right, of course. And we have known that for a long time, that the Ukrainian military forces are superb. And, in fact, as a partner to NATO, we have seen their performance. We have been able to exercise and train together for quite some time. We have all been impressed with Ukrainian forces. But that changed dramatically in terms of being even more impressed, obviously, since Russia went into Ukraine. Their fighting spirit, their capability, their determination, it’s been remarkable and really something to watch. And in terms of what President Zelenskyy actually asked for, this is really part of an ongoing conversation that we have been having with Ukraine for many, many weeks now. And that is that they come to the alliance and tell us what more they need, in terms of air defense capabilities or anything they believe they need to defend themselves. So this is an ongoing conversation. It was important for him to continue to relay those ideas. And we will continue to take those suggestions and asks and match them with allied nations.

AMANPOUR: Do you feel a sense of having to rush to actually get all the defensive weapons that they require in a timely manner? And are you confident that these weapons that are going in are doing so in time, in order to be able to keep staving off the Russian advances?

SMITH: There’s no doubt that time is of the essence. And we want to make sure that any country that comes forward and pledges military assistance is actually going to deliver it in short order. And the alliance has been working to make sure that’s the case. In terms of the timing of deliverables, all I can actually comment on is the United States, where we have taken a look at the deliverable — like, the timelines of how capabilities are moving into Ukraine. And from what we can tell so far, those capabilities that the U.S. is providing, over $2 billion of support in lethal assistance so far, they actually are making their way into Ukraine and getting into the hands of the Ukrainian forces.