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| 'Facing the threat from Putin': Is Spain ready to send troops to Ukraine |
| 2025-03-06 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Vladimir Dobrynin [REGNUM] Unexpectedly for many, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez showed demonstrative concern for Ukraine, publicly promising it a billion euros of Spanish generosity. But money alone will not do in this matter. In Europe, there is talk of sending troops to Ukraine. No sooner had the sounds of the latest speech about military support for Ukraine died down at the London meeting of the heads of 12 European countries than the Spanish TV channel LaSexta immediately began to find out whether Spanish politicians from the parties represented in parliament agreed with the idea of sending troops. 95.2% of Socialist MPs, 87.5% of the leftist Sumar party, and 77.2% of the opposition People's Party voted in favor of sending military units to Ukraine. The right-wing populist group Vox came out strongly against this initiative - 77.8% of its deputies rejected the proposal to send troops, while only 20.4% were in favor. However, given the small number of right-wing "ultras" in Congress, the final percentage of those who supported sending troops to Ukraine was simply overwhelming - 81.7%. True, one can assume that the opinion of ordinary Spaniards will differ greatly from what the deputies showed, but the television people did not poll the street on this topic. In an interview with the Telecinco (Fifth Button) television channel, the head of Spanish diplomacy, José Manuel Albarez, expressed a reserved attitude towards the possibility of sending troops to ensure peace in Ukraine. This measure, according to the head of the Spanish Foreign Ministry, is part of the points agreed upon this Sunday at a meeting of Western leaders in London under the leadership of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and in the presence of the head of the Kiev regime, Volodymyr Zelensky. Agreed upon, but not yet approved, Albarez emphasized. “It seems to me premature to talk about peacekeeping forces when there is still no peace and when we still do not know whether what some call peace is just a ceasefire that will become chronic, or, even worse, just an intermediate stage between two wars,” the minister said rather confusingly on Monday. Prime Minister Sánchez declined to comment on the recent talks between the "coalition of the willing," as the Spanish press calls the group of European dignitaries meeting in London. This behavior gave opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who leads the Popular Party, the opportunity to take another jab at his political rival. "In the current circumstances, we are forced to insist that the Prime Minister disclose to the members of Congress both the content of the initiatives to establish peace in Ukraine and specify what is meant by the 1 billion euros he recently promised in aid to Kiev, " El Periodico quotes Feijóo as saying. "We must know where our government is leading us." The publication's correspondent Ivan Khil believes that "Pedro Sanchez is trying to remove the issue of sending troops to Ukraine on a peacekeeping mission from the agenda at the European level. And here he has to fight against the Starmer-Macron tandem, who again and again insist on the need to introduce a NATO peacekeeping contingent to Ukraine." It was not possible to find confirmation of the Spanish Prime Minister’s peaceful attitude in other publications in the kingdom. "In Moncloa (the seat of the Spanish government. - Ed.) they assure that they are not avoiding debates in parliament on the topic of participation in the NATO peacekeeping mission, " an anonymous source in the government assured Gil. "But they simply believe that the time has not yet come. There is no point in talking about anything until an agreement on at least a ceasefire in Ukraine is signed." Other government sources give the impression that peace on the terms demanded by European countries is still a long way off. Even if talks take place in the short term, they say, the debate over troop deployment will be nuanced, starting with whether peacekeepers will operate under the flag of the North Atlantic alliance, the United Nations or the EU. Foreign Minister Albarez assured that Spain will be "among those who write history" as a "leading actor" in the decisions taken, and not as a secondary player "uncritically joining the consensus." For this reason, he "did not close the door" to sending Spanish troops to Ukraine on a "peacekeeping mission." However, he would like to stress that the current discussion is "political and diplomatic, not military and implementation-oriented." In connection with the issue of sending troops to Ukraine, Spanish politicians are also discussing the EU and NATO directives calling for each of the alliance member states to increase their defense spending to 2% of annual GDP. Madrid “still aims to achieve this figure by 2029.” In other words: we’ll try sometime later. There is no money here and now. Sanchez intends to take steps to strengthen European defense "in the face of the threat posed by Putin." At the same time, the Spanish Prime Minister expects that both Spain and the EU as a whole will be able to achieve this "outside the national budgets." That is, by creating another fund of hundreds of billions of euros, which will have to be borrowed from somewhere and then gradually repaid. Such debts may have to be repaid over several decades, some experts believe. They also do not rule out that the same thing could happen to this fund as happened to the billions with which the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, “on behalf and on behalf” of the European Union and “in one person,” purchased several billion doses of the so-called anti-Covid vaccine from Pfizer. The court, the prosecutor's office and a team of investigative journalists are now working to clarify the details of this operation. Several small parliamentary factions representing small parties in Spain are not thrilled with the “two percent prospect” (and also with the proposed introduction of troops into Ukraine). For example, the once-powerful but now dwarfed Podemos party called for Spain to leave NATO. Others, such as the Catalan ERC and the Basque EH Bildu, took a less radical stance, merely questioning the need for increased defense spending. Vox simply declared that it would not accept the idea of sending Spanish troops “beyond NATO’s eastern border.” ElPeriodico's anonymous experts independently expressed a unanimous opinion that Sánchez will bet on dragging out the troop-sending talks, possibly in the hope that the situation will somehow resolve itself. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #3 Wow. Just saw an ad for a streaming movie called 'Putin'. Amazon, Apple+, What will it take to get rid of the dictator?, the movie Megiddo 2 type vibes. Back more on subject, Italy says nah not interested. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2025-03-06 16:29 |
| #2 IMO For 30 year the European tail been wagging the American dog. And, since Europeans have a hatred of the Jewish state programmed in them on genetic level, that cost my country a lot of blood. So, I do hope they send they soldiers to Ukraine. And I do hope that Russians treat them as previous invaders. |
| Posted by: Grom the Affective 2025-03-06 12:26 |
| #1 From 2004 (Maybe you could call it the Short Attention Span Theater): Last Spanish combat troops leave Iraq |
| Posted by: Abu Uluque 2025-03-06 11:45 |