The Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, said today that the Alliance will continue its strong support for Ukraine because if Russia is allowed to win, the whole world will pay a high price for years.

- If Putin and other authoritarian leaders see that force pays, they will use it again to achieve their goals. It will make us all more vulnerable and it is therefore in our security interest to support Ukraine. There will be no lasting peace if the aggressor wins, if repression and autocracy prevail over freedom and democracy, Stoltenberg pointed out.

Answering a question about Ukraine's entry into NATO, he pointed out that the door of the Alliance is "open and that Russia does not have the right to veto the expansion of NATO".

- Russia tried to prevent the entry into NATO of Montenegro and North Macedonia, and then Finland and Sweden. NATO's doors are open, this also applies to Ukraine. When it comes to Ukraine, it is necessary to work with political leaders for practical cooperation. Now the focus is on supporting Ukraine and Putin not to win, Stoltenberg pointed out.

He announced that the foreign ministers of NATO member states at the upcoming Summit in Bucharest will discuss ways to strengthen member states' resilience and the challenges posed by China's activities.

- China is not an enemy, but we see that it is increasingly modernizing its military systems and that it is increasing its presence from the Arctic to the Western Balkans, from space to cyberspace, and that it is striving to control the important infrastructure of NATO. We also see that Russia and China are cooperating more and more closely, Stoltenberg stated.