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- Ukraine war latest: Kremlin threatens end of ‘life-saving’ grain deal; Wagner’s feud with Kremlin approaching critical date Sky News
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Russia-Ukraine war news: Moscow slams NATO’s expansion as Finland readies for membership – The Washington Post
- Russia-Ukraine war news: Moscow slams NATO’s expansion as Finland readies for membership The Washington Post
- Russia-Ukraine live news: Finland to join NATO in historic shift Al Jazeera English
- 🔴Live: Finland joins NATO as Russia says it may get ‘tough’ on hostile EU FRANCE 24 English
- Ukraine-Russia war latest: Ukraine intercepts wave of Russian drone strikes over key port city The Telegraph
- Sweden Summons Russia’s Ambassador Over ‘Legitimate Target’ Statement Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
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Explainer: NATO’s Articles 4 and 5: How the Ukraine conflict could trigger its defense obligations
WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (Reuters) – A deadly explosion occurred in NATO member Poland’s territory near its border with Ukraine on Tuesday, and the United States and its allies said they were investigating unconfirmed reports the blast had been caused by stray Russian missiles.
The explosion, which firefighters said killed two people, raised concerns of Russia’s war in Ukraine becoming a wider conflict. Polish authorities said it was caused by a Russian-made rocket, but Russia’s defense ministry denied involvement.
If it is determined that Moscow was to blame for the blast, it could trigger NATO’s principle of collective defense known as Article 5, in which an attack on one of the Western alliance’s members is deemed an attack on all, starting deliberations on a potential military response.
As a possible prelude to such a decision, however, Poland has first requested a NATO meeting on Wednesday under the treaty’s Article 4, European diplomats said. That is a call for consultations among the allies in the face of a security threat, allowing for more time to determine what steps to take.
The following is an explanation of Article 5 and what might occur if it is activated:
WHAT IS ARTICLE 5?
Article 5 is the cornerstone of the founding treaty of NATO, which was created in 1949 with the U.S. military as its powerful mainstay essentially to counter the Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc satellites during the Cold War.
The charter stipulates that “the Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.”
“They agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area,” it says.
AND WHAT IS ARTICLE 4?
Article 4 states that NATO members “will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.”
Within hours of the blast in Poland on Tuesday, two European diplomats said that Poland requested a NATO meeting under Article 4 for consultations.
[1/4] Zuzana 155 mm gun howitzer of NATO Enhanced Forward Presence battle group takes position before live fire exercise, during Iron Spear 2022 military drill in Adazi, Latvia November 15, 2022. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins
HOW COULD THE UKRAINE WAR TRIGGER ARTICLE 5?
Since Ukraine is not part of NATO, Russia’s invasion in February did not trigger Article 5, though the United States and other member states rushed to provide military and diplomatic assistance to Kyiv.
However, experts have long warned of the potential for a spillover to neighboring countries on NATO’s eastern flank that could force the alliance to respond militarily.
Such action by Russia, either intentional or accidental, has raised the risk of widening the war by drawing other countries directly into the conflict.
IS INVOKING ARTICLE 5 AUTOMATIC?
No. Following an attack on a member state, the others come together to determine whether they agree to regard it as an Article 5 situation.
There is no time limit on how long such consultations could take, and experts say the language is flexible enough to allow each member to decide how far to go in responding to armed aggression against another.
HAS ARTICLE 5 BEEN INVOKED BEFORE?
Yes. Article 5 has been activated once before – on behalf of the United States, in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked-plane attacks on New York and Washington.
WHAT HAS BIDEN SAID ABOUT ARTICLE 5 COMMITMENTS?
While insisting that the United States has no interest in going to war against Russia, President Joe Biden has said from the start of Moscow’s invasion that Washington would meet its Article 5 commitments to defend NATO partners.
“America’s fully prepared with our NATO allies to defend every single inch of NATO territory. Every single inch,” Biden said at the White House in September.
He had declared earlier that there was “no doubt” that his administration would uphold Article 5.
Reporting by Matt Spetalnick;
Editing by Kieran Murray, Grant McCool and Bradley Perrett
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Ukraine-Russia war: Boris Johnson and NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg say western support for Kyiv must not cease
In separate comments published Sunday, Stoltenberg and Johnson also reiterated that Western governments must continue to support Ukraine to deter future aggression by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Stoltenberg told the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag that nobody knew how long the conflict would last but “we need to prepare for the fact that it could take years.”
“We must not cease to support Ukraine. Even if the costs are high, not only for military support, but also because of rising energy and food prices.”
Boris Johnson, writing in the Sunday Times after his second visit to Kyiv on Friday, said Western allies must “steel ourselves for a long war, as Putin resorts to a campaign of attrition, trying to grind down Ukraine by sheer brutality.”
Johnson said that seizing all of Ukraine’s Donbas, which covers much of eastern Ukraine, had been Putin’s objective for the last eight years “when he ignited a separatist rebellion and launched his first invasion.”
While Russia was still short of this goal, “Putin may not realise it but his grand imperial design for the total reconquest of Ukraine has been derailed. In his isolation, he may still think total conquest is possible.”
Both men stressed the need to avert future Russian aggression.
Stoltenberg said: “If Putin learns the lesson from this war that he can just carry on as he did after the Georgia war in 2008 and the occupation of Crimea in 2014, then we will pay a much higher price.”
Johnson asked what would happen if President Putin was free to keep all the areas of Ukraine now controlled by Russian forces. “What if no one was willing to lift a finger as he annexed this conquered territory and its fearful people into a greater Russia? Would this bring peace?”
Johnson said that through firm long-term support for Ukraine, “we and our allies will be protecting our own security as much as Ukraine’s and safeguarding the world from the lethal dreams of Putin and those who might seek to copy them.”
Johnson wrote: “Time is the vital factor. Everything will depend on whether Ukraine can strengthen its ability to defend its soil faster than Russia can renew its capacity to attack. Our task is to enlist time on Ukraine’s side.”
‘Strategic advantage’
On Sunday, Ukrainian officials said heavy fighting continues in the city of Severodonetsk — the epicenter of the bloody battle for Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region — and surrounding communities as Russian forces try to break the resistance of Ukrainian defenders and capture parts of the eastern Luhansk region they don’t already control.
Serhii Hayday, head of the regional military administration, said the “battles for Severodonetsk continue,” and that the sprawling Azot chemical plant, where some 500 civilians are sheltering, had been shelled again.
Russian operations appear designed to break Ukrainian defenses to the south of Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, cutting off Ukrainian units still defending the two strategically important cities.
To the west, in the Donetsk region, also in the Donbas, the Ukrainian military reported further shelling of Ukrainian positions near Sloviansk. There was also a missile strike in the area, according to an operational update by the Ukrainian General Staff. But there appears to have been little change in frontline positions.
Stoltenberg was cautiously optimistic that Ukraine could turn the tide of the war. “Although the battle in Donbass is being waged more and more brutally by Russia, Ukrainian soldiers are fighting valiantly. With more modern weapons, the probability increases that Ukraine will be able to drive Putin’s troops out of Donbas again.”
Ukraine’s military has been burning through Soviet-era ammunition that fits older systems. While Western weapon systems are arriving, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky warned this week that they needed to come faster as Russia amasses a significant artillery advantage around the two cities in eastern Ukraine.
US officials insist that Western arms are still flowing to the front lines of the fight. But local reports of weapons shortages — and frustrated pleas from Ukrainian officials on the front lines — have raised questions about how effectively supply lines are running.
The Biden administration announced Wednesday it was providing an additional $1 billion in military aid to Ukraine, a package that includes shipments of additional howitzers, ammunition and coastal defense systems. While the UK “plans to work with our friends to prepare Ukrainian forces to defend their country, with the potential to train up to 10,000 soldiers every 120 days,” Johnson said.
While Russia has been making incremental gains in eastern Ukraine, Johnson stressed the attrition of Russian forces in the grinding battles, saying Russia would need “years, perhaps decades, to replace this hardware. And hour by hour Russian forces are expending equipment and ammunition faster than their factories can produce them.”
In late May, Ukrainian officials said Russian units were being reinforced by mothballed Soviet-era T-62 tanks, which appeared to have been brought out of storage.
The British Prime Minister added: “The UK and our friends must respond by ensuring that Ukraine has the strategic endurance to survive and eventually prevail.”
He laid out four essential steps to support Ukraine, which included: preserving the Ukrainian state which includes: ensuring the country receives “weapons, equipment, ammunition and training more rapidly than the invader and build up its capacity to use our help;” a “long-term effort to develop” alternative overland routes to overcome Russia’s “stranglehold on Ukraine’s economy by blockading its principal export routes across the Black Sea.”
This weekend, Zelensky visited the frontlines in the coastal city of Odesa and southern city of Mykolaiv, which are both Russian targets in its attempt to seize the Black Sea coast.
Johnson added that Russian blockade of Black Sea ports meant that some “25 million tonnes of corn and wheat — the entire annual consumption of all the least developed countries — is piled up in silos across Ukraine.”
On the forthcoming NATO summit in Madrid, Stoltenberg said that a new strategy concept will be adopted “will declare that Russia is no longer a partner, but a threat to our security, peace and stability.”
He said that “Russia’s nuclear saber rattling is dangerous and irresponsible. Putin must know that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be waged.”
CNN’s Tara John, Barbara Starr, Jeremy Herb and Oren Liebermann contributed to this piece.
Two maps show NATO’s growth and Russia’s isolation since 1990
A Swedish soldier takes part in exercises on May 17, 2022. Her country, along with Finland, now wants to join NATO.
Jonathan Nackstrand | Afp | Getty Images
Russia has become increasingly isolated from the rest of Europe over the last 30 years, and maps of the continent illustrate just how drastic the change has been.
Finland and Sweden this week announced their intention to join the NATO military alliance, ending a decades-long history of military neutrality for both countries. Their plans came about after Russia invaded Ukraine in late February — allegedly to stop it from joining NATO.
Russia first attacked Ukraine in 2014, after a civilian uprising ejected a pro-Russia leader from the country. Ukraine sought military training and assistance from Western countries afterward but had not been admitted to NATO.
Countries in NATO are bound by treaty to defend each other. Like Ukraine, Finland shares a long border with Russia.
Europe in 1990
In 1990, the year after the Berlin Wall fell, the Russia-dominated Soviet Union included Ukraine, the Baltic states and several other now-independent countries. The Warsaw Pact, an alliance also dominated by Russia, included six satellite countries that are all now independent as well.
In 1990, the year after the Berlin Wall fell, Russia dominated the Soviet Union and six allied Warsaw Pact countries.
Bryn Bache | CNBC
Europe in 2022
Over the last 32 years, Germany has reunified and all the former Warsaw Pact countries have joined NATO. Three countries that were once part of the Soviet Union — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — have joined NATO as well.
As of 2022, NATO has expanded to let in three former Soviet states and all of the former Warsaw Pact countries.
Bryn Bache | CNBC
Though Sweden and Finland want to join their Nordic neighbors in NATO, admission could take many months or be blocked entirely.
Turkey, a NATO member since 1952, objects to the two countries’ admission, calling Scandinavian countries “guesthouses for terrorist organizations.”
Opinion | Putin warned the West about NATO’s expansion. Now in Ukraine he’s acting.
I watched Putin’s speech that day and have to admit: It didn’t make much of an impression. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) criticized it as a return of Cold War rhetoric, but America was fighting two hot wars then, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Putin’s Russia seemed too feeble to worry about. Not anymore.
Putin’s sullen rage appears to be exploding. As this year’s Munich Security Conference took place, Russia-backed separatists were reported to be firing salvos of rockets into Ukraine as Russia prepared for a ground invasion with more than 150,000 troops. The marquee speech this time was from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who lurched between pleading for security guarantees and blasting the West for “appeasement.”
Despite the grim news from Ukraine, there was an almost-celebratory tone among many of the Western leaders gathered. Many speakers boasted that the NATO alliance was back, after a soggy period described here just two years ago as “Westlessness.” European allies have joined the United States in pledging sanctions against Putin described as “heavy,” “massive” and “swift and severe” — but which Zelensky decried as too late to prevent the carnage that has already begun in his country.
NATO’s unity is indeed an achievement. But war is always a failure. This one has been building, in stages, for years. Putin all but announced his intentions. The forums and proposals that might have prevented conflict were clear. Still, Russian tanks rolled toward what might be the bloodiest and most one-sided assault in modern European history.
Zelensky, a feisty, erratic man who often seems more suited to his former role as a television comedian than a Churchillian war leader, asked a question that should haunt the Munich delegates: “How did we get to this point in the 21st century where war is being waged and people are dying in Europe? … To me, this answer is obvious: The security architecture of our world is brittle, it is obsolete. The rules that have been agreed upon by the world dozens of years ago are no longer working.”
One of the few checks on Putin that could make a difference came from Wang Yi, the foreign minister of China, which is Russia’s only major ally these days. He cautioned in a video speech that “the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of any country should be respected and safeguarded” — and that “Ukraine is no exception.” Putin is willing to violate the West’s norms, but maybe not China’s.
How will this war unfold, if Russia continues “uncoiling” its massive combat force, in the evocative phrase used by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin? A hint came from a simulation Saturday night organized by Dmitri Alperovitch, the Russian-born founder of the computer-security firm CrowdStrike. In his scenario, Kyiv capitulated after five days of Russian rocket and artillery barrages and a three-pronged ground attack. Then, Russia installed a puppet government, held rigged elections and promptly withdrew most of its forces.
Alperovitch asked me to play the American role, and I operated within the limits President Biden has set. The United States will support Ukraine’s resistance and impose steep costs on Russia, but it will stay out of the war unless Putin is stupid enough to attack NATO territory. That outcome, Alperovitch predicted, would amount to another “frozen conflict,” of the sort that Putin has already littered across the former Soviet empire.
America’s ability to defeat Putin’s strategy of neutering Ukraine depends almost entirely on Ukrainians’ willingness to fight a long, bloody insurgency against Russian invaders, with support from the United States and its European allies.
At the conference, there was an admirable sense of solidarity for the long fight that might be ahead. “I don’t think Putin was prepared for the unity inside the European Union,” said a Swedish official. “We have rediscovered the habits of cooperation,” said a top U.S. official. “We are ready to defend our land, our people,” vowed Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv. For once, the Germans, Poles, French and Americans seemed to be singing from the same NATO song book.
Putin makes a perfect villain in this war. He’s brutal, arrogant and contemptuous of the rules of order that America and its allies celebrate. He told us what he was going to do, and he’s doing it. He is moving to take Ukraine hostage this week, which will leave three unpalatable choices. Either the West negotiates with the hostage-taker, which would be repugnant; the West frees the hostage by force; or we wait for the hostage-taker to become impoverished and fatigued, and quit the fight. This last outcome, which would be the best for the West, might also be the most likely — if the United States and its allies can be patient.
Still, there won’t be any good choices in the weeks and months ahead, only the consequences of bad ones that allowed Russia and the West to talk past each other, ducking the hard questions, for more than a decade.
Explainer: What are NATO’s next steps if Russia invades Ukraine?
Airmen from the 4th Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C. and the 48th Fighter Wing, Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England, arrive at Amari Air Base, Estonia, January 24, 2022. U.S. Air Force Photo/Staff Sgt. Megan Beatty/Handout via REUTERS
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BRUSSELS, Jan 27 (Reuters) – NATO allies are putting forces on standby and sending reinforcements to eastern Europe in response to Russia’s buildup of more than 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders.
Here are some of the dilemmas about NATO’s next steps.
WILL NATO COME TO UKRAINE’S DEFENCE?
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Not militarily. Ukraine is not a member of NATO and the alliance is not treaty-bound to defend it. U.S. President Joe Biden has said he will not send American or allied troops to fight Russia in Ukraine.
However, Kyiv is a close partner and was promised eventual membership of the alliance at a NATO summit in 2008.
For the moment, the 30-member North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is working with Ukraine to modernise its armed forces. Canada operates a training programme in Ukraine, while Denmark is also stepping up efforts to bring Ukraine’s military up to NATO standards. The alliance has also said it will help Ukraine defend against cyber attacks and is providing secure communications equipment for military command.
WHAT ABOUT ARMING UKRAINE?
The United States, Britain and the Baltic states are sending weapons to Ukraine, including anti-tank missiles, small arms and boats. Turkey has sold drones to Ukraine that the Ukrainian military has used in eastern Ukraine against Russian-backed separatists.
However, Germany is against sending arms to Ukraine. Berlin has instead promised a complete field hospital and the necessary training for Ukrainian troops to operate it, worth about $6 million.
SO WHY IS NATO PUTTING FORCES ON STANDBY?
The alliance is concerned about a potential spillover from any conflict between Russia and Ukraine, particularly in the Black Sea region, where Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, and in the Baltic Sea.
The U.S. Department of Defense has put about 8,500 American troops on heightened alert. Denmark is sending a frigate to the Baltic Sea and four F-16 warplanes to Lithuania. Spain has sent a minesweeper and a frigate to join NATO naval forces in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
Madrid is also considering sending fighter jets to Bulgaria, while the Netherlands has also offered two F-35 warplanes to Bulgaria from April.
France may send troops to Romania under NATO command.
WHY ARE ALLIES NOT MOVING MORE QUICKLY?
Russia says it has no intention of invading Ukraine. read more
NATO, which is both a political and military organisation, has offered more talks with Moscow in the format of the NATO-Russia Council in Brussels to find a solution.
Moreover, as an alliance of 30 countries with different priorities, decisions are taken collectively and it can take time to drum up the necessary troops for joint missions.
NATO allies are discussing whether to increase the number of troops rotating through eastern Europe. They will focus on the issue when allied defence ministers meet for a scheduled meeting in Brussels in mid-February.
NATO has four multinational battalion-size battlegroups, or some 4,000 soldiers, led by Canada, Germany, Britain and the United States in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland.
The troops serve as a “trip wire” for NATO’s 40,000-strong response force to come in quickly and bring more U.S. troops and weapons from across the Atlantic.
The biggest decisions may not come until June, when NATO leaders are due to meet for a summit in Madrid. They are expected to agree a new master plan, called a Strategic Concept, in part to cement NATO’s focus on deterring Russia.
WHAT IS NATO LIKELY TO DO IN THE BLACK SEA?
Bulgaria’s government has said it is ready to stand up a 1,000-strong force in the country, under Bulgarian command and in close cooperation with NATO, possibly with some soldiers from other allied countries.
It could be formed by April or May.
The Western alliance has a multinational land force of up to 4,000 troops in Romania. The United States also has soldiers stationed at separate bases in Romania and in Bulgaria.
Romania could see a bigger NATO presence, after France offered more troops. Romania is in talks with the United States over increasing troop numbers on its soil.
Although operational since 2017, the multinational force in Romania remains only a land command, without immediate air, maritime or special forces.
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Additional reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova and Luiza Ilie, Editing by Timothy Heritage
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Putin and West Spar Over NATO’s Military Ties to Ukraine
MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia demanded “legal guarantees” on Wednesday that the NATO alliance would never expand eastward, ratcheting up the stakes as the West scrambled to respond to Russia’s military buildup near Ukraine.
Mr. Putin, who has increasingly portrayed Ukraine’s deepening military partnership with the United States and other NATO countries as an existential threat, said that Moscow wanted to start talks with the West to reach an agreement that would block the alliance’s expansion. He spoke in the midst of what Western officials describe as a growing threat of military action by tens of thousands of Russian troops massing close to the border with Ukraine — a former Soviet nation that seeks to join the Western alliance.
“The threat on our western borders is, indeed, rising, as we have said multiple times,” Mr. Putin said at a ceremony for ambassadors at the Kremlin on Wednesday. “In our dialogue with the United States and its allies, we will insist on developing concrete agreements prohibiting any further eastward expansion of NATO and the placement there of weapons systems in the immediate vicinity of Russian territory.”
Mr. Putin’s demand is a nonstarter for NATO, whose officials say they are committed to allowing every country to pick its alliances for itself. Foreign ministers from NATO member countries gathered Wednesday in Latvia, a former Soviet republic bordering Russia, in a signal of the alliance’s cohesion and its support for its ex-Soviet member states.
“It’s only Ukraine and 30 NATO allies that decide when Ukraine is ready to join NATO,” Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of the alliance, told reporters in Riga, the Latvian capital. “Russia has no veto, Russia has no say, and Russia has no right to establish a sphere of influence trying to control their neighbors.”
But Mr. Putin appears to be pushing for direct talks with President Biden, who has sought dialogue with the Kremlin and a “stable and predictable” relationship with Russia, seeking out agreement on issues of mutual interest. Russian officials have said they are preparing for a call or videoconference between the two presidents as early as this month, and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is set to meet with his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, in Stockholm on Thursday.
“We don’t know whether President Putin has made the decision to invade,” Mr. Blinken said in Riga. “We do know that he is putting in place the capacity to do so on short order.”
In his speech on Wednesday, Mr. Putin denied that Russia was threatening Ukraine. Rather, he said, Russia was simply taking “adequate military and technical measures” to respond to growing NATO activity in and around Ukraine, near Russian borders. A day earlier, he warned that if missiles were deployed in Ukraine that could reach Moscow within minutes, Russia would respond in kind.
“Just look at how close to Russian borders the military infrastructure of the North Atlantic alliance has come,” Mr. Putin said Wednesday. “For us, this is more than serious.”
The United States provides Ukrainian forces with training and antitank weaponry in Ukraine’s fight against Russian-backed separatists in the country’s east. Six thousand Ukrainian and NATO troops held joint exercises in September. Mr. Putin has expressed particular irritation at NATO activity in the Black Sea region, including what he said were approaches as close as 12 miles to Russian borders by Western nuclear-capable bombers.
“NATO is not a threat to anyone,” Mr. Stoltenberg, the alliance’s secretary general, said, rejecting the idea that Russia had reason to worry about those activities. “This idea that NATO support to a sovereign nation is a provocation is just wrong.”
NATOs eastward expansion, — including to the three ex-Soviet Baltic countries, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, in 2004 — has long infuriated Mr. Putin and other Russian leaders, who describe it as having flouted Russia’s security interests, at a time when it was too weak to fight back.
“We need legal guarantees,” Mr. Putin said on Wednesday. “Russia’s legal concerns in the security sphere were ignored, and they now continue to be ignored.”
NATO allies declared in 2008 that “Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance,” a stance they reaffirmed this year. And ever since Russia annexed Crimea and backed separatists in the country’s east in 2014, popular support in Ukraine for NATO membership has risen.
But Western officials privately acknowledge that in practice, there is little chance that Ukraine will join NATO in the foreseeable future, because there is no consensus in the alliance about the degree of confrontation with Russia that its members are prepared to risk.
Mr. Putin appears to be increasingly concerned not just about Ukraine’s official NATO membership, but also about the deployment of new Western military hardware in Ukraine, including drones provided by Turkey, a NATO member. On Tuesday, he said that such deployments could cross a “red line.”
American officials say that Russia has been moving the estimated 90,000 troops it has near its border with Ukraine in ways that might presage an invasion, and it has been sharing intelligence with its allies. Western officials have said that they do not believe that Mr. Putin has made a decision about whether to invade Ukraine, and that there is a window to try to enhance deterrence and influence his judgment.
It is not yet clear what such deterrence would look like, since Ukraine is not a NATO member. But Western officials said Wednesday that they were prepared to impose economic sanctions that would be more painful than those that came after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, relayed that message to the Kremlin when he visited Moscow last month, Mr. Blinken said.
“We’ve made it clear to the Kremlin that we will respond resolutely, including with a range of high-impact economic measures that we’ve refrained from using in the past,” Mr. Blinken said.
In Riga, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, took part in the meeting of his NATO counterparts and said his country was in need of additional military equipment, including missile defense systems, according to the Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform.
“Russia cannot stop Ukraine from getting closer with NATO,” Mr. Kuleba said, according to Reuters. “Any Russian proposals to discuss with NATO or the United States or any other country any so-called guarantees that the alliance would not expand to the east are illegitimate.”
Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Vienna, and Julian E. Barnes contributed from Washington, D.C.
US signals it is open to sending more troops to support NATO’s mission in Iraq
“The US is participating in the force generation process for NATO Mission Iraq and will contribute its fair share to this important expanded mission,” Pentagon spokesperson Cmdr. Jessica L. McNulty told CNN. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke about the mission with his NATO counterparts during a meeting with defense ministers on Thursday.
Late Thursday night, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby clarified that there are “no plans” to send more US troops into Iraq itself. However, US troops could also support the mission from outside the country, a defense official told CNN.
“We support NATO’s expanded mission in Iraq and will continue to do so, but there are no plans to increase U.S. force levels there,” Kirby said on Twitter.
Such a move would have been a reversal of the previous administration’s policy which reduced the number of troops in the country to 2,500 following former President Donald Trump’s election defeat. The Biden administration is also weighing whether to stick to a May deadline to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan.
At a press conference Thursday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the NATO mission would increase in size from 500 personnel to about 4,000.
“The US and its partners in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS remain committed to ensuring the enduring defeat of ISIS, and the Department looks forward to continued consultations with Iraq, NATO, and the Global Coalition going forward,” McNulty added.
Austin “welcomed the expanded role” of the NATO mission in Iraq, according to a readout of the discussions provided by the Pentagon. He “expressed confidence that all of the work done to date with the Iraqi government and security forces will lead to a self-sustainable mission.”
Stoltenberg stressed the importance of the NATO mission to prevent the resurgence of ISIS.
“Not so long ago, ISIS controlled territory as big as the United Kingdom and roughly 8 million people. They have lost that control,” Stoltenberg said. “But, ISIS is still there. ISIS still operates in Iraq, and we need to make sure that they’re not able to return. And we also see some increase in attacks by ISIS. And that just highlights the importance of strengthening the Iraqi forces.”
The increase in NATO forces would be incremental and comes at the request of the Iraqi government, he added.
Trump’s acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller touted the withdrawal of troops prior to Biden taking office as a sign of the mission’s success, saying, “The drawdown of US force levels in Iraq is reflective of the increased capabilities of the Iraqi security forces. Our ability to reduce force levels is evidence of real progress.”
In early February, Austin announced a global force posture review, in which military leaders would examine US troop levels around the world, including the “military footprint, resources, strategy and missions.”
Austin stressed the importance of alliances and partnerships as part of the review.
“From Afghanistan and the Middle East, across Europe, Africa and our own hemisphere, to the wide expanse of the Western Pacific, the United States stands shoulder-to-shoulder with allies old and new, partners big and small,” Austin said. “Each of them brings to the mission unique skills, knowledge and capabilities. And each of them represents a relationship worth tending, preserving and respecting. We will do so.”
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that no final decisions or recommendations have been made as part of the global force posture review.
This story has been updated with additional comment from Pentagon spokesman John Kirby.