Watch video interview with Ine Eriksen Søreide (H):
THE PARLIAMENT (Nettavisen): Sunday marks two months since Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.
Leader of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in the Storting, Ine Eriksen Søreide (H), sees no immediate solution to the atrocities:
– This is, unfortunately, going to be a long war, and the Ukrainians must be able to defend themselves, Søreide says to Nettavisen in the video interview above.
Also read: Lavrov’s ambiguous nuclear weapons promise attracts attention: – Better if he had not said so
– As Foreign Minister, how would you handle the Ukraine war differently from the current government?
– Now the most important thing is the handling the government actually does, and they have our full support to donate more and heavier weapons to Ukraine. We gave a very clear message to the government when they consulted the Storting some time ago that if there was that type of weapon, it would have our full support.
– It is positive that the weapons have already been sent to Ukraine, she adds.
Latest news about the Ukraine war here
– Do we do enough – in time?
– We must always be ahead because the development is dramatic and goes in a negative direction. Bold means that we must constantly consider whether there is more we can do, both in terms of humanitarian aid to state structures in order to pay wages to all the millions of people left in Ukraine, who have not been able to flee, and so must we of course consider whether there are other types of weapons / military aid we can provide.
Also read: Egeland fears “a senseless massacre” in eastern Ukraine
– The war lasted two months on Sunday. What worries you the most?
– Of course, it is first and foremost the civilian disorders that are absolutely enormous. The brutality of the Russian forces is absolutely terrible. War crimes are committed every single day, and those responsible must be held accountable.
– What the civilian population is now experiencing upsets us all violently: We see torture. We see rapes. We see a system in the brutality that hardly knows boundaries, says the former foreign minister.
See also this video interview with Søreide:
USA: “Very worried”
In the last week, the rhetoric about nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war has flared up again. The CIA director stated that the United States is “very concerned” that Russia will be able to resort to nuclear weapons.
The President of Ukraine Voldomyr Zelenskyj recently stated in a CNN interview that the world should be prepared for the possibility that President Vladimir Putin will be able to use nuclear weapons in the ongoing war.
Also read: Norway has donated an air defense system to Ukraine
Ambiguous promise
Now Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has made an ambiguous promise on nuclear weapons, which is attracting attention among a number of nuclear weapons experts. On Tuesday, Lavrov announced that Russia was in a new phase of what the Russians refer to as the “special operation”, and referred to the Russians’ brutal entry into the Donbas in eastern Ukraine.
Lavrov was also asked this week whether Russia was considering using nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war.
“In the current phase, we are considering conventional weapons,” Lavrov said Sky News which refers to a quote quoted by the state-run Russian news agency RIA.
Also read: Russia has begun a new phase in the war
However, Russia experts and nuclear experts are not reassured by Lavrov’s statements.
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