West steps up action in defence of Ukraine

MADRID: The US has vowed to reinforce Europe’s defences in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as NATO declared Moscow the West’s greatest threat – leading Vladimir Putin to slam the alliance’s “imperial ambitions”.

Meeting in Madrid on Wednesday (local time), NATO leaders said Russia “is the most significant and direct threat to allies’ security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area”.

It welcomed Sweden and Finland as invitees to join the alliance, and US President Joe Biden announced new deployments of US troops, ships and planes.

These include shifting the headquarters of the US 5th Army Corps to Poland, rotating an army brigade in and out of Romania, deploying two squadrons of F-35 fighters to Britain, sending US air defence systems to Germany and Italy and increasing the fleet of US Navy destroyers in Spain from four to six.

Britain also pledged another $1.2bn in military aid for Ukraine on Wednesday, including air defence systems and drones, while Norway said it would donate three multiple-launch rocket systems to Ukraine.

Mr Biden said the reinforcement was what Mr Putin “didn’t want” – and Moscow, facing fierce resistance from Ukrainian forces equipped with Western arms, reacted with predictable fury.

Mr Putin accused the alliance of seeking to assert its “supremacy”, telling journalists in the Turkmenistan capital of Ashgabat that Ukraine and its people are “a means” for NATO to “defend their own interests” and “assert their supremacy, their imperial ambitions”.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said “Ukraine can count on us for as long as it takes” and announced a new NATO strategic overview that focuses on the Moscow threat.

The document, updated for the first time since 2010, warned that the alliance “cannot discount the possibility” of an attack on its members.

Sweden and Finland, which abandoned military non-alignment in response to the invasion to seek NATO membership, were invited to join on Wednesday, which Mr Putin said was “no problem”.

“We don’t have problems with Sweden and Finland like we do with Ukraine,” he said in Ashgabat.

In Ukraine, officials said Russian missiles had hit civilian housing and businesses in and around the cities of Dnipro, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv, leaving at least seven dead and 14 wounded.

The Russian defence ministry said the Kharkiv attack had hit Ukrainian command centres and a training base for foreign “mercenaries”.

And it said it had inflicted severe casualties on Ukrainian troops defending the town of Lysychansk in Luhansk.