NATO pledged on Wednesday to support Ukraine for as long as necessary in the face of Russia’s “cruelty,” at a summit that endorsed the Alliance’s future expansion to include Sweden and Finland, which Moscow deemed aggressive “and” destabilizing.
“Ukraine can count on us for as long as it takes,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, referring to a “moral and political obligation” for the Atlantic Alliance, which is meeting in Madrid until Thursday.
In a joint statement, NATO member countries, which have already supplied billions of dollars worth of weapons to Kyiv, specified that they had agreed on a new aid plan involving the “delivery of non-lethal military equipment” and strengthening Ukrainian defenses against cyberattacks.
“Russia’s appalling cruelty is causing immense human suffering and mass displacement,” they wrote, asserting that Moscow bore “full responsibility for this humanitarian catastrophe.”
The announcements were welcomed by the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, who praised this “strong” and “lucid” position on Russia.
Invited to speak a few hours earlier to the leaders of the Alliance via videoconference, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had called for increased military and financial support, which he said was essential to resist “Russian artillery”.
“Significant threat”
The NATO summit enabled member countries of the Alliance to adopt a new strategic roadmap describing Russia as “the most significant and direct threat to the security of the allies”.
“We cannot rule out the possibility of an attack against the sovereignty or territorial integrity of the allies,” the document states, which had not been revised since 2010.
This new roadmap also targets China for the first time, which, according to NATO, represents a “challenge” to its “security”.
Demonstrating their unity, NATO countries have approved a strengthening of their military presence on the Alliance’s eastern flank, which will bring the number of troops in its “high readiness forces” to more than 300,000.
“This is the most significant reorganization of our collective defense since the Cold War,” Jens Stoltenberg emphasized.
“We are meeting our commitments” and “we are proving that NATO is more necessary than ever,” insisted US President Joe Biden, who for his part announced a strengthening of the American military presence throughout Europe and especially in the Baltic states.
Turkish veto lifted
The Madrid summit also officially launched the accession process for Sweden and Finland, who decided to join NATO in response to the Russian offensive in Ukraine, breaking with a long tradition of non-alignment.
This accession had until now been blocked by Turkey, which accused Stockholm and Helsinki of harboring militants from the Kurdish organization PKK, which Ankara considers “terrorist”.
But after lengthy negotiations, Ankara gave its approval on Tuesday evening to the entry of these two Nordic countries into NATO, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan believing he had obtained their “full cooperation” in his fight against the PKK.
This upcoming expansion of NATO to include the two Nordic countries has provoked anger in Moscow.
This is “a profoundly destabilizing factor for international affairs,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who denounced an “aggressive” move towards Russia.
In a statement, Russian diplomacy also threatened Norway with reprisals, accusing the NATO member country of blocking the transit of goods destined for Russians living on the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.
Putin “made a mistake”
Vladimir Putin “hoped for less NATO on his western front”, but “he was completely wrong”: “he is getting more NATO”, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared after the agreement reached in Madrid.
On the ground, however, Ukraine continued to pay a heavy price for the war, with new deadly attacks against civilians, notably in Mykolaiv (south), where five people died in a strike on a residential building, according to regional authorities.
These bombings came two days after a strike that ravaged a crowded shopping center in Kremenchuk, 330 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, killing at least 18 people and leaving around 40 missing, according to the Ukrainian government.
Furthermore, Ukrainian authorities announced that they had recovered 144 soldiers, including 95 “Azovstal defenders” in Mariupol as part of the “largest exchange [of prisoners with Moscow] since the beginning of the Russian invasion.”
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace stated on Wednesday that Russia had “failed on all its major objectives” militarily. The war has come at a “massive cost” to Moscow, he asserted in an interview with LBC radio, estimating that “25,000” Russian soldiers had been killed since the start of the conflict.
Boris Johnson attributes this to Vladimir Putin’s “toxic masculinity.” “If Putin were a woman, […] I really don’t think he would have embarked on this crazy macho war,” the British Prime Minister told German television channel ZDF. AFP
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