“We are saying that we’re not taking part in the conflict, but we’re taking sides. We want to weaken the Russian war machine. We want to weaken the ability of [Vladimir] Putin and his regime to baselessly attack a sovereign country. We want to help Ukraine defend itself. But we don’t want to go to war with Russia”, Borrell told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper in an interview.
The diplomat stressed that he “didn’t understand” people who say “that the more weapons you supply to Ukraine, the longer the war will last and the greater the suffering of Ukrainians will be…I ask these people: Doesn’t it matter how this war ends? Should the Ukrainians get on their knees and be torn to pieces by the Russians?...You see, wars end in negotiations. But you have to come to the negotiating table from a position of strength, and the task now is to put the Ukrainians in that position”.