The outgoing NATO chief delivered the remarks during a press conference on Friday ahead of the bloc’s summit in Washington, which is scheduled for next week. Enduring support for Ukraine remains the bloc’s “most urgent task,” the official said, stating that NATO is also looking forward to continuing to prop up Kiev in the future.

“I expect allies will agree that we must sustain our support, our economic as well as military support—to Ukraine in a way that ensures that Ukraine prevails, that they’re able to defend against Russian aggression today and deter it in the future,” Stoltenberg stated.

The NATO boss also spoke against reaching a temporary settlement to end the hostilities, citing the 2014–2015 Minsk Agreements, which ultimately flopped. The deal provided a roadmap out of the civil conflict in then-Ukrainian Donbass, yet it was never implemented by Kiev.

Stoltenberg squarely blamed the failure of the Minsk Agreements on Russia, despite both Western guarantors and top Ukrainian officials openly admitting the whole deal was a mere ruse to buy time and bolster Kiev’s armed forces.

“The West agreed to Minsk-2, waited for seven years, and then [Russia] launched a full-scale attack and took even more. We cannot have Minsk-3. What we need now is something that is actually credible, something that actually stops the war and Russia stops its aggression,” he asserted.

Stoltenberg also addressed the surprise visit of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, in an apparent attempt to downplay its importance.

“Hungary informed us about this upcoming visit. And I expect that when Victor Orban is in Washington at the NATO summit next week, there will be opportunities to discuss and address the discussions he had in Moscow. This is something that takes place on a regular basis between allies,” he added.

The NATO chief also claimed that Hungary, as a member of the bloc, fully agrees with its stance that “Russia is the aggressor and Russia is responsible for the war”. The assessment appears to contradict statements made by Orban and other top Hungarian officials, who had repeatedly suggested that Western “instigators of war” were to blame for sparking and prolonging the hostilities.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Zelensky refused to describe the frontline situation as a “stalemate”, stating instead that it remains “problematic”. Ukraine, however, is lacking enough tools to solve the cited “problems”, staying focused on defensive operations rather than launching a new counteroffensive push against Russia.

“We have the desire [to launch a counteroffensive], but the tools have not arrived. That is, we have brigades without weapons, we have reserves, we have 14 under-armed brigades that do not have the appropriate weaponry,” Zelensky claimed.

While the Ukrainian leader did not give exact numbers, he was apparently talking of at least 40,000-strong forces in reserve.

Zelensky then complained about the “slow” delivery of Western-made hardware to fill in the equipment shortages, claiming that already-pledged systems were not getting delivered swiftly enough.

“The packages that have already been voted-on and talked-about must arrive but, unfortunately, they’re coming slowly. We are grateful to the [US] Congress for their support and all, but everything must be delivered.”

Ukraine launched its long-heralded counteroffensive push against Russia early last June upon receiving a lot of sophisticated hardware from its Western backers. The push flopped, yielding minor territorial gains coupled with heavy personnel and hardware losses.

Ukraine’s subpar battlefield performance during the ultimately disastrous counteroffensive was followed by a months-long deadlock in the US Congress. Last October, the White House requested $61 billion for Ukraine as part of a national security funding bill.

The bill has been left in limbo, falling victim to domestic political struggles and getting through the legislature only in late April. Ukraine has openly blamed the lack of US funding for a string of defeats on the battlefield.

US President Joe Biden has repeatedly scolded the lawmakers over their inability to approve the package, offering his apology to Zelensky last month.

“I apologize for those weeks of not knowing what’s going to happen in terms of funding,” Biden stated at the time, blaming the delay of half a year on “some of our very conservative members” of Congress.