'Political willingness' from the US needed to start sending Patriot missiles to Ukraine

Talks aimed at bringing about an end to hostilities in Ukraine will continue next week in Abu Dhabi following technical discussions here in Brussels. Thank you. Let's bring in our NATO correspondent Shona Murray who is in Helsinki. Good morning Shona. Well, good morning, Stefan. Yes, indeed, those talks have concluded for two days with officials from NATO, the European Commission and the World Bank. Now it's all eyes on Abu Dhabi next week, where you'll have higher working level meetings with Russia, Ukraine and the United States, convened by the US envoy, Steve Witkoff. What I've heard, the best sort of hope for this is that there may be another prisoner swap and potentially a ceasefire, but we don't know if that's confirmed because we don't know what Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is willing to agree to. Coming from here in Helsinki, officials are saying that the message needs to be impressed on Putin that Europe will never abandon Ukraine and for him to continue the war is fruitless. Now, above all... The urgent need for Ukraine to receive Patriot interceptor missiles, that is also very important. NATO sources have told me that there's a message coming from the Supreme Allied Commander that countries that have interceptors need to give them to Ukraine, but they're only willing to do so if they can get guaranteed replenishment from the US. That is not forthcoming yet. But I caught up with Antti Häkkinen, the Finnish Defence Minister, and I asked him about this situation and what should be done. The winter is coming and Russia is preparing huge attacks to Ukraine's civil infrastructure, energy infrastructure, and now is the most critical time to have all the air defense capabilities for Ukraine, but we can arrange. We have the funding. We have the funding, now we need the stocks to be delivered to Ukraine. And there's also some other countries globally which can support. But we need the political willingness also from the US side to start the deliveries. Europeans have gave the funding for that. And now it's only a matter of political arrangements. Europeans are now the biggest supporter of Ukraine and we are giving the EU strong bilateral support. So we are quite big players in that field. But still we have to show more strength, more willingness in long term to support Ukraine. Because if there comes some political messages that Europe is exhausted or something like that, that's a wrong message. That weakens our negotiation position. When we are messaging how we are supporting Ukraine in the long term first, and the sanctions also, we have to show willingness in the long term. Just a final question, you said that there was a serious threat still looming from Russia across Europe. Can you describe that, given where we are geographically? Well, Russia is ramping up their military in all domains, from traditional conventional warfare and also nuclear capabilities, and they're building new infrastructure, increasing their manpower, building new infrastructure, not just in our vicinity, but also a wider area. So they can pose a military threat, not direct at this point, but in future we have to be prepared for that kind of scenarios. We hope that there will be a peace and peaceful solutions in everything, but Europeans have to ramp up their defense and fast and also counter these hybrid threats much more efficiently and united.