The ministers also stressed the importance of continuing to arm and finance Ukraine in its fight to contain Russian forces and to jump-start ongoing peace talks, Stoltenberg told reporters after an emergency meeting.
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They reaffirmed their determination not to deploy NATO forces on Ukrainian soil or airspace in order to prevent a wider war, he said.
“NATO has a responsibility to ensure that this escalation does not go beyond Ukraine,” he said.
However, it is important, he added, to keep sending arms to Ukraine to keep pressure on Russia to make concessions at the negotiating table, an effort diplomats said were successful on Wednesday.
“The support we give them to resist the Russian invasion also helps them achieve an acceptable outcome in the negotiations,” he said.
But the focus of the meeting was on Europe’s broader security and how best to address what Stoltenberg called the “new security reality” of an assertive Russia in the long run.
In his speech to Congress on March 16, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky again asked for a no-fly zone to protect against Russian attacks. (Washington Post)
As a reminder of this new reality, the meeting was attended by the defense ministers of non-NATO Finland, Sweden, Georgia and Ukraine, who highlighted the alliance’s resurgence in the wake of the Russian threat.
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According to Stoltenberg, the details of the plan to expand NATO’s presence in Europe will be approved at the NATO Heads of State and Government Summit in June. He said he hoped the summit would decide on a significant expansion of NATO’s presence “on land, at sea and in the air” to include more troops permanently based on Europe’s eastern flank, as well as additional aircraft carriers, submarines and ships.
NATO will also explore the role it can play in cybersecurity and space, he said. He added that in order to fund the expansion, alliance members would have to set aside 2 percent of their budget for defense spending.
“In the new security reality, we need to reset our deterrence and defense,” he said.
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The meeting also stressed that NATO remains united in its determination to prevent the war in Ukraine from spreading to the rest of Europe.
Over the past two months, the 30-member alliance has deployed thousands of additional troops to its eastern flank and deployed the NATO Response Force for the first time. Its members also sent tons of ammunition and weapons to Ukraine. Stoltenberg noted that there are hundreds of thousands of NATO allied troops in Europe, including 100,000 US troops and about 40,000 troops under direct NATO command.
Representatives of NATO and the US have repeatedly stressed that NATO is a defensive alliance, that it is not at war with Russia and will not fight in Ukraine. They also pledged to defend “every inch” of NATO territory. Sunday’s Russian missile attack on a Ukrainian training facility located just a few miles from the border with NATO member Poland showed the risk that a misfire in Ukraine could force NATO to respond.
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“The risk of incidents in the event of hostilities at the border is really high,” said Stefano Stefanini, a former Italian ambassador to NATO. “If there was a misfire, NATO could start a war.”
Douglas Luth, a retired US Army lieutenant general and former US ambassador to NATO, said the presence of NATO forces is partly to reassure allies and partly to contain Russia.
“These troops are not sent to Portugal in the west, they are sent to the states on NATO’s eastern flank to reassure allies that the words of the NATO treaty really mean something, that when these allies feel threatened, NATO will have their backs.” he said. .
“This is also a message from Russia across the border that NATO means what they said: NATO will protect every inch of NATO territory,” he continued. “The brightest red line in Europe today is the red line demarcating NATO’s borders.”
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On Sunday, Russia moved within 15 miles of that line, raining rockets at a military training center in western Ukraine, close to the Polish border. At least 35 people were killed and more than 100 were injured in the attack, according to Ukrainian authorities. NATO troops have in the recent past trained Ukrainian forces at a facility known as the International Peace and Security Center, but NATO officials said the alliance forces were not there at the time of the attack.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the site is being used to house foreign fighters and a storage base for weapons and equipment that are sent to Ukraine by “foreign countries.” A day earlier, the Kremlin had warned that it viewed Western arms shipments as “legitimate targets.”
A senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance with ground rules set by the Pentagon, said the strike did not interfere with Western military aid.
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Rachel Rizzo, Non-Resident Senior Fellow The Atlantic Council’s European Center said the strike was more of a warning than a direct test of NATO’s commitment to Article 5. The irony, she said, is that Russian President Vladimir Putin used the pretext of wanting fewer NATO troops to fight the war in Ukraine. but ends up the other way around.
“If he wanted fewer troops, then all he gets is NATO troops,” she said.
correction
A previous version of this article incorrectly listed the name of US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. The article has been corrected.