U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with NATO foreign ministers in Brussels just hours after Russia’s shelling of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine. VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports from Washington.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels, said NATO allies are not seeking conflict with Russia, but they are ready for it if it comes.
Speaking to reporters ahead of Friday’s NATO foreign ministers’ meeting, Blinken added that the alliance “will defend every inch of NATO territory,” if it comes to that.
Stoltenberg condemned Russia’s overnight assault on civilians and Ukraine, particularly the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, near the Ukrainian city of Enerhodar.
He said the attack “demonstrates the recklessness of this war and the importance of ending it, and the importance of Russia withdrawing all its troops and engaging in good faith in diplomatic efforts.”
Stoltenberg emphasized NATO is a defensive alliance and is not seeking conflict with Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeatedly has called for NATO to establish no-fly zone around Ukraine since the invasion began, but NATO allies have resisted a step that would draw them into a direct war with Russia.
The secretary general noted Friday there should be “no misunderstanding about our commitment to defend and protect all allies.” He said they have increased the presence of NATO forces in eastern Europe “as a defensive presence.”
NATO’s chief added that U.S. and Canadian troops have joined their European allies in the region and are “stepping up with more presence in the eastern part of the Alliance, on land, at sea and in the air.”
The secretary general noted NATO foreign ministers are meeting to coordinate and consult the alliance’s response to Russian invasion of Ukraine and consider its long-term implications.
Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
With Russia poised to invade Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is in Belgium for two days of talks with NATO leadership and allied defense ministers. Tens of thousands of Russian troops surrounded Ukraine from the north, south and east. VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb has more from Brussels.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has arrived in Brussels for talks with NATO leadership and allied defense ministers, as tens of thousands of Russian troops have surrounded Ukraine from the north, south and east.
During the gathering on Wednesday and Thursday, Austin and his counterparts will discuss how to deter Russia from invading Ukraine while shoring up defenses on the alliance’s eastern flank.
“This really is a decisive moment for NATO, the likes of which we have not really seen potentially since NATO was established in 1949,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “This is where American leadership in NATO matters,” he told VOA.
The “underlying message” from NATO and the United States will be to protect the international rules-based order by calling out “egregious attempts to undermine the rule of law” and “upholding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states,” according to a senior defense official.
“We cannot allow an adversary to try to redraw borders by force without facing significant consequences,” the official added.
Austin will then travel to NATO members Poland and Lithuania, Russian neighbors that have watched the developments surrounding Ukraine with increasing concern.
While in Poland on Friday, Austin will meet with President Andrzej Duda before visiting U.S. troops. The United States will soon have about 9,000 troops in Poland after President Joe Biden earlier this month ordered nearly 5,000 additional troops to deploy there, citing security concerns due to Russia’s recent moves.
U.S. troops of the 82nd Airborne Division recently deployed to Poland because of the Russia-Ukraine tensions are setting up camp at a military airport in Mielec, southeastern Poland, Feb. 12, 2022.
In Lithuania, Austin will meet with President Gitanas Nauseda and host a meeting with that country’s defense minister along with those from Estonia and Latvia.
President Joe Biden said Tuesday Russia has 150,000 troops surrounding Ukraine, including in Belarus to the north, the illegally annexed Crimea region to the south, and along the Russian border with Ukraine to the east. Russian ships are also exercising nearby in the Black Sea, which prompted a formal protest from Ukraine’s foreign ministry.
“I think of a boa constrictor that is squeezing Ukraine to force the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky to blink, to make some giant concession,” retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, who once commanded U.S. Army forces in Europe, told VOA.
Russia’s defense ministry announced Tuesday that some military units would pull back to their bases, a claim that Biden said the U.S. had not yet verified.
Russian tanks of the Western Military District units return to their permanent deployment sites, in an unknown location in Russia, in this still image taken from a handout video released Feb. 15, 2022.
Meanwhile, Russian legislators passed proposals Tuesday calling on President Vladimir Putin to formally recognize the separatist-controlled regions of eastern Ukraine as independent states, in a move that could justify an incursion in an area it no longer recognizes as Ukraine’s territory.
The United States has pushed for a diplomatic solution to the tensions and has said it will not fight Russian forces in Ukraine, which is not a member of NATO.
The U.S. has shipped planeloads of lethal military aid to Ukraine in recent weeks, including Javelin anti-tank weapons and ammunition. A small number of U.S. troops had also trained Ukrainian soldiers through a program that started following Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, but those troops were ordered by Austin to leave Ukraine a few days ago, citing concerns that a potential Russian invasion could come at any moment.
Workers unload a shipment of military aid delivered as part of the United States of America’s security assistance to Ukraine, at the Boryspil airport, outside Kyiv, Ukraine, Jan. 25, 2022.
NATO allies have made multiple attempts to get Putin to pull his troops away from Ukraine’s border and have threatened severe economic sanctions should Russian troops invade.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrived in Moscow on Tuesday for talks with Putin. Biden called Putin on Saturday. French President Emanuel Macron spoke face to face with Putin last week.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, on the other hand, expressed his support for Putin during the heightened tensions over Moscow’s forces surrounding Ukraine.
U.S. officials and former officials have warned that an invasion of Ukraine could embolden other adversaries.
“If the United States with all of our allies, all of our partners and the combined diplomatic and economic power, cannot deter the Kremlin from … another attack on Ukraine, then I think the Chinese Communist Party leadership is not going to be terribly impressed by anything that we say about Taiwan or the South China Sea,” Hodges said.
Visiting NATO headquarters Thursday, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned that Europe is facing its biggest security crisis in decades and pledged more military deployments in eastern Europe, in response to Russia’s troop buildup on the border with Ukraine.
“The stakes are very high, and this is a very dangerous moment. And at stake are the rules that protect every nation, every nation big and small,” Johnson said after talks with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
Britain is strengthening its deployments in Estonia and Poland and is considering further deployments in southeastern Europe in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Several NATO members have sent troop reinforcements to allies on NATO’s eastern flank. Many observers say Moscow’s actions have brought the alliance closer together.
Stoltenberg welcomed Britain’s commitment.
“The U.K. is playing a leading role, delivering both militarily and diplomatically,” he said. “Renewed Russian aggression will lead to more NATO presence, not less.”
US carrier strike group
Warships and fighter jets from 28 NATO members conducted exercises off the Italian coast earlier this month. It was the first time since the end of the Cold War that a U.S. Navy carrier strike group was placed under NATO command.
The United States has deployed an additional 3,000 troops to Poland and Romania.
“The focus of this particular mission … is to reinforce the NATO alliance, to build that trust and confidence, to reassure our allies and to strengthen the eastern flank of the NATO alliance,” Colonel Joe Ewers of the U.S. Army 2nd Cavalry Regiment said Wednesday.
France is preparing to send troops to Romania, while Germany — criticized in the past for failing to take a harder line on Russia — is boosting its troop deployment in Lithuania by 350 personnel, in addition to the 500 soldiers already there.
German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht called Germany’s participation an important signal for NATO allies.
“We can be relied on, and we are showing that with this strengthening of the battle group,” she told reporters on Monday.
NATO united
In 2017, then-U.S. President Donald Trump described NATO as “obsolete” because, he said, it “wasn’t taking care of terror.” In 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron called the alliance “brain dead,” citing a perceived waning commitment by its main guarantor, the United States.
Now, Russia’s actions have served to unify NATO, according to analyst Jonathan Eyal, associate director at the Royal United Services Institute.
“The Russians were demanding not merely an acceptance of a division of Europe into new spheres of influence, but a rollback on all the security arrangements put in place on the continent since the early 1990s at the end of the Cold War. And that was simply so outrageous, so extreme in its scope that quite frankly, it left very little opportunity for countries to disagree that a rejection and a flat-out rejection of such demands was the only approach.”
Eyal added that the role of the United States has been crucial in recent months.
“It’s astounding the amount of meetings, the amount of visits, the amount of effort that the (U.S.) administration put into ensuring that the consensus was kept,” he said.
Public support
Opinion polls show an increase in public support for NATO both in existing member states and in non-NATO allies, including Sweden and Finland. While neither is expected to join the alliance any time soon, both countries have voiced alarm at the Russian troop buildup.
“Nobody wants this to escalate any further. We all want Russia to de-escalate the situation. We want to find peaceful ways out of the situation,” Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin told reporters after meeting European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week.
Putin’s miscalculation?
Russia’s amassing of more than 100,000 troops near the Ukraine border was a miscalculation, Eyal said.
“If Russia was thinking of dividing Europe, what they’ve done over the past few months achieved precisely the opposite,” he said.
But Russia believes it has achieved the objective of keeping Ukraine and Georgia out of the alliance, said Alex Titov, a Russia analyst at Queen’s University Belfast.
“Russia made it very clear, I think abundantly clear, that that is a really big (red) line. As Putin said several times, membership of NATO (for Ukraine and Georgia) would basically mean war with Russia for all NATO countries.”
Despite Moscow’s denials, many Western leaders still believe Russia is planning to invade Ukraine. Rather than highlighting NATO’s divisions, many observers say that threat has galvanized the alliance.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday welcomed U.S. plans to deploy more troops to Europe and said NATO is considering sending additional battle groups to the southeastern part of its alliance amid tensions along the Russia-Ukraine border.
Stoltenberg told reporters that while NATO is preparing for the possibility that Russia may take military action, NATO remains ready to engage in “meaningful dialogue” and find a diplomatic resolution to the crisis.
“NATO continues to call on Russia to deescalate. Any further Russian aggression would have severe consequences and carry a heavy price,” he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday that the U.S. deployment is heightening tensions in the region.
The United States and other Western allies have been preparing economic sanctions to level against Russia in hopes of persuading Russian President Vladimir Putin to pull back the more than 100,000 troops Russia has near the border. Russia has denied it plans to invade Ukraine.
Stoltenberg said Thursday there has been a “significant movement of Russian military forces into Belarus,” Ukraine’s northern neighbor where Russia is set to take part in joint military drills this month.
“This is the biggest Russian deployment there since the Cold War,” Stoltenberg said.
Russia has demanded NATO pull back troops and weapons deployed in eastern European member countries, and to make clear that Ukraine cannot join the 30-member military alliance.
NATO and Ukraine have rejected those demands, saying countries are free to pick their allies.
But Stoltenberg said Thursday that NATO is ready to talk to Russia about relations between the two sides, and about risk reduction, increased transparency and arms control.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is meeting Thursday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the latest in a series of visits to Kyiv by world leaders and diplomats to show support for Ukraine and try to advance a peaceful resolution to the crisis.
Erdogan has suggested Turkey, a NATO member that also has good relations with Russia, could act as a mediator.
Talks Wednesday between Putin and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson did not provide any breakthroughs. French President Emmanuel Macron was expected to have a phone conversation with Putin later Thursday.
Macron and U.S. President Joe Biden discussed the Russia-Ukraine situation in a call Wednesday, with the White House saying the two leaders reviewed diplomatic efforts and “preparations to impose swift and severe economic costs on Russia should it further invade Ukraine.”
The Norwegian Rights Council also warned Thursday about the effects on those living in eastern Ukraine if the crisis escalates.
After years of violence in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where Ukrainian forces have been battling Russia-backed separatists, the aid organization said the humanitarian needs are already high with nearly 3 million people relying on aid.
Increased fighting “would devastate already damaged civil infrastructure, further restrict peoples’ movements, block access to communities in need, and disrupt essential public services such as water, power, transport and banking,” the NRC said in a statement.
The U.S. said Wednesday it is dispatching 2,000 more troops to Europe, most of them to Poland, and moving 1,000 troops from Germany to Romania to bolster NATO’s eastern flank countries.
The additional U.S. troops, part of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, are “not going to fight in Ukraine” in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told reporters. Rather, he said, they are intended as an “unmistakable signal that we stand with NATO.”
Kirby said the new deployment is not permanent, but that the U.S. could dispatch more troops as warranted. Kirby said the deployment is separate from the 8,500 U.S. troops placed on heightened alert last week for possible dispatch to Europe.
The Defense Department spokesperson said the U.S. still does not believe Putin has “made a decision on invading Ukraine.”
But Kirby said the Russian leader is “showing no signs of being willing to de-escalate” and has continued to add troops in Russian-aligned Belarus to Ukraine’s north and along Russia’s border with eastern Ukraine.
Kirby said the U.S. is “prepared for a range of contingencies” involving Putin’s actions toward Ukraine. The spokesman said the new deployment is “not the sum total of the deterrence.”
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba addressed the conflict in a broader context at a news conference Wednesday, saying, “I’m confident that Russia’s war on Ukraine and wider Europe will ultimately end when two fundamental issues are resolved. First, the West should turn from reactive to proactive strategies when dealing with Russia.”
He added, “Ambiguity on Ukraine’s role as an indivisible part of the West has to be put to an end. The Ukrainian people chose this course and defended it at a high price.”
“We are historically, politically and culturally a part of the West,” Kuleba said. “It is time to end harmful ambiguity which serves as a temptation for the Kremlin to continue its attempts to undermine Ukraine or reverse its course against the will of the Ukrainian people.”
Some information for this report came from Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
Several NATO member states are sending troops and hardware to allies in Eastern Europe as tensions with Russia escalate. The United States has put several thousand troops on alert. Moscow has over 100,000 troops amassed on the Ukraine border, and the West fears an imminent Russian invasion, which the Kremlin denies. Henry Ridgwell looks at what NATO’s military response means.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the ball is now in Russia’s court after the U.S. hand delivered its written response to Moscow’s stated security concerns over NATO and Ukraine. As VOA’s Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine reports, Blinken made clear there will be no change to NATO’s open-door policy to new members, as Russia had demanded. Producer: Kimberlyn Weeks
