UWC President meets with Swedish Minister of Defense

Paul Grod, President of the Ukrainian World Congress, met with Pål Jonson, Minister of Defense of Sweden, on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Vilnius.

“We discussed the future of the Sweden-Ukraine security framework and continued support for Ukraine’s Armed Forces,” Paul Grod said.

I was pleased to congratulate Minister of Defence, @PlJonson on Sweden's accession in NATO. We discussed the future of the Sweden-Ukraine security framework and continued support for Ukraine's Armed Forces. #NATOSummit pic.twitter.com/1ObkU2ASuK

— Paul Grod (@PaulMGrod) July 11, 2023

The UWC President congratulated Sweden on unlocking its entry into the North Atlantic Alliance. Türkiye, which had blocked Stockholm from joining the military-political union because of alleged insufficient efforts to fight terrorism, eventually agreed to approve the country’s entry “as soon as possible.”

Sweden fulfilled all the terms of the memorandum concluded at last year’s Alliance summit in Madrid to satisfy Türkiye’s security concerns, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.

“Türkiye and Sweden agreed today to establish a new bilateral Security Compact. NATO will also significantly step up its work in this area. And I will establish, for the first time at NATO, the post of Special Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism,” he added.

Apart from that, during the NATO summit in Vilnius, Ukraine and Sweden signed an agreement on cooperation in defense procurement.

“This document provides great opportunities both for our Armed Forces and Swedish companies like SAAB and others,” Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said.