NATO calls Russia its ‘most significant’ threat
Leaders offer support to Ukraine, eye own future
MADRID – NATO declared Russia the “most significant and direct threat” to its members’ peace and security on Wednesday and vowed to strengthen support for Ukraine, even as that country’s leader chided the alliance for not doing more to help it defeat Moscow.
The alliance’s condemnation was not wholly surprising: Its chief earlier said Russia’s war in Ukraine had created Europe’s biggest security crisis since World War II. But it was a sobering about-face for an organization that once called Moscow a strategic partner.
NATO held its annual summit in Madrid in a world transformed by Russia’s invasion. The war pushed the alliance to pour troops and weapons into eastern Europe on a scale not seen since the Cold War and has driven what Secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg called “the biggest overhaul of our collective defense since the end of the Cold War.”
But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged even more. He asked for more modern artillery systems and other weapons and warned the leaders that they either had to provide Kyiv with the help it needed to defeat Russia or “face a delayed war between Russia and yourself.”
“The question is who’s next? Moldova? Or the Baltics? Or Poland? The answer is: all of them,” he said. “We are deterring Russia to prevent it from destroying us and from destroying you.”
Zelenskyy lamented that NATO’S open-door policy to new members did not appear to apply to his country.
“The open-door policy of NATO shouldn’t resemble the old turnstiles on Kyiv’s subway, which stay open but close when you approach them until you pay,” Zelenskyy said by video link to the leaders of the 30 NATO nations meeting in Madrid.
Zelenskyy has acknowledged that NATO membership is a distant prospect. Under NATO treaties, an attack on any member would trigger a military response by the entire alliance, so it is trying to strike a delicate balance, letting its member nations arm Ukraine without sparking a direct confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.
NATO has moved quickly to ensure that its members are protected, dramatically scaling up military force along its eastern flank.
The defense organization is also on track to gain two new members in Sweden and Finland, both of whom were
formally invited on Wednesday to join the alliance. The two Nordic nations abandoned their long-held nonaligned status earlier this year and applied to join NATO as protection against an increasingly aggressive and unpredictable Russia.
U.S. President Joe Biden, whose country provides the bulk of NATO’S military power, vowed the summit would send “an unmistakable message … that NATO is strong and united.”
Money remains a sensitive issue – just nine of NATO’S 30 members currently meet the organization’s target of spending 2% of gross domestic product on defense.
While it did not label China an adversary, NATO said Beijing’s “stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values.”