The U.N. called for turning the war in Ukraine

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said NATO would supply Ukraine with weapons in the war against Russia "for as long as necessary."

“It is only right that the countries that are meeting here, but also many others, make their contributions so that Ukraine can defend itself – with financial resources, with humanitarian aid, but also by providing weapons, which Ukraine urgently needs,” Scholz said as he arrived Madrid for the second day of a NATO summit.

“The message is: we will continue this as long as it takes and as intensively as it takes so that Ukraine can defend itself.” G7 leaders recently agreed to continue providing both military and financial support to Ukraine. It came after Ukraine’s embattled president, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, asked NATO leaders for modern weapons and funds to help the country’s fight against Russia and warned that fighting could spread beyond its borders to their countries.

He made the remarks while speaking virtually at the NATO summit Wednesday, calling the fight “a war for the right.” “The question is – who is next for Russia? Moldova? The Baltic states? Poland? The answer is, all of them,” Selenskyj said at the summit. “We need to break the Russian artillery advantage … We need much more modern systems, modern artillery.”

On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned Western countries that continuing to supply Ukraine with advanced weapons would only prolong the conflict. The senior Russian diplomat said the West’s attitude toward Ukraine is “absolutely counterproductive and harmful,” adding that the more weapons pumped into Ukraine, “the longer this conflict lasts, the longer the agony of the Nazi regime supported by Western capitals will last.”

“I say it to emphasize the fact that the longer weapons are supplied that are designed to prolong the conflict, to prolong the suffering of civilians who are constantly living under fire from the Ukrainian neo-Nazi movement, the more missions we will carry out on Ukraine,” Lavrov said. “Pumping up” Ukraine with Western weapons will only lead Russia to “conduct more missions on the ground,” he said.

The United States and other Western allies of Ukraine have provided Ukraine’s war machine with millions of dollars worth of modern weapons since February, when Russia began what President Vladimir Putin called a “special military operation.” Washington has pledged to supply Ukraine with precision missile systems designed to enable it to hit Russian positions from a greater distance.

Senior officials in Moscow say the Russian operation is aimed at “demilitarizing” the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of eastern Ukraine, which together form the Donbass region. In 2014, the two regions declared themselves new republics and refused to recognize Ukraine’s Western-backed government. Russia says it considers arms deliveries to Ukraine by the United States and its NATO allies as legitimate military targets.