Macron also announced that the Multinational Force for Ukraine, which would be deployed once the fighting has ended, would hold exercises in the coming months in Ukraine\u2019s neighbouring countries \u201cto validate our deployment plans and demonstrate that we are ready\u201d.<\/p>\n
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said: \u201cIt is time to put an end to this pointless bloodshed in Ukraine\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said support for Ukraine was \u201cfor the sake of freedom throughout Europe\u201d.<\/p>\n
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said now was the time to \u201cdouble down\u201d to end the war, at a time when Ukraine appeared to be turning the tide in the conflict by stabilising the front line and striking deep inside Russia.<\/p>\n
Britain joined the European Union\u2019s US$103 billion ($179b) support loan for Ukraine and introduced with the bloc a sanctions package targeting malicious Russian cyber actors.<\/p>\n
Before the summit, 10 countries announced the formation of a coalition to develop \u201cpurely defensive\u201d anti-ballistic capabilities for Europe.<\/p>\n
A joint statement from Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine and the United Kingdom said: \u201cWe do this not against any people, but in defence of our own\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said: \u201cStrong and sufficient anti-ballistic capabilities are essential to bringing Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine to an end\u201d. <\/p>\n
Moscow dismissed the summit as a gathering of leaders who \u201cdo not want peace\u201d, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov branding the summit \u201ca coalition of warmongers\u201d.<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Macron also announced that the Multinational Force for Ukraine, which would be deployed once the fighting has ended,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[68,3458,3471,696,7230,1403,2082,305,5345,6371,98669,130,3963,117,111,43,139,69,3459,21411,1886,61,3461,100172,6149,80],"class_list":["post-524496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-air","tag-allies","tag-among","tag-announced","tag-coalition","tag-defence","tag-for","tag-have","tag-increase","tag-joins","tag-kyiv","tag-more","tag-moscow","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pledge","tag-pressure","tag-support","tag-to","tag-ukraine","tag-ukrainian","tag-war","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}