NATO accepted on Tuesday (28) the candidacies of Sweden and Finland in order to stop the intentions of Russia, which is demanding the surrender of Ukraine after four months of conflict and is accused of “war crimes” for blowing up a shopping center.

Jens Stoltenberg was responsible for the announcement of the agreement – ​​Photo: @jensstoltenberg/Reproduction/ND

“I am pleased to announce that we have an agreement that paves the way for Finland and Sweden to join NATO,” said Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, opening the organization’s summit in Madrid.

The two Scandinavian countries, not traditionally united militarily, reversed their position after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

In recent weeks, Russia has stepped up its offensive in the east and on Tuesday ruled out any solution to the conflict short of Ukraine’s total surrender.

“The Ukrainian side can end (the conflict) today” if it “orders” its soldiers to “surrender their weapons,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

But Russia’s attack on the mall on Monday further bolstered Ukraine’s resolve.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said it was “one of the most shameful acts of terrorism in European history.”

Russia denied the allegations and said the abandoned site caught fire after bombing a nearby weapons depot.

Zelenskiy on Tuesday urged the UN to conduct an on-site investigation of the case to “independently gather information and make sure it was indeed a Russian missile attack.”

“Indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians are a war crime,” the leaders of the G7, a group of leading Western economies, denounced as they gathered in Germany.

“Brake” Russia

The G7 agreed to tighten the siege of Moscow, focusing on the military industry and banning the import of gold into the country.

The goal is to “increase” the cost of the war for Moscow, summed up the head of the German government, Olaf Scholz.

Ukraine is suffering from “cruelty not seen in Europe since World War II,” Stoltenberg said.

Therefore, it is very important that we remain ready to provide assistance,” he added.

The United States will announce Wednesday that additional “long-term” reinforcements will be deployed to Europe, mostly concentrated on the eastern flank of the border with Russia, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said.

General Patrick Sanders, the new Chief of Staff of the British Armed Forces, stressed the need to stop Russian “territorial expansion”.

“We are not at war,” but “we must act quickly so as not to go to war because of the inability to stop territorial expansion,” Sanders said, comparing the situation to the situation in 1937, before World War II. World War, in the face of Nazi Germany.

Kyiv Mayor and former world boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, who is in Madrid for a NATO summit, called on allies to “speed up” arms shipments to Ukraine to fight back Russia.

“We need anti-missile systems. We see that every day Russian missiles destroy our cities, kill civilians, destroy infrastructure,” he explained.

City in ruins

Just hours after the announcement of the Kremenchuk bombing, Ukrainian authorities announced another deadly Russian attack on civilians in Lysychansk, a strategic stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in the Donbas basin (east).

In the recently captured Russian sister city of Severodonetsk, at least eight Ukrainian civilians were killed and more than 20 people, including two children, were injured while “drawing water from a cistern,” said Luhansk Oblast Governor Sergei Gaidai.

Lisichansk is the last major city conquered by the Russians in this province.

“Our defense holds the line, but the Russians are turning the city into ruins with the help of artillery, aviation (…) The infrastructure is completely destroyed,” Gaidai specified.

After failing to capture Kyiv in late March, Russian forces have concentrated their attacks on the eastern mining region of Donbass, which has been partly in the hands of pro-Russian separatists since 2014.