No troops without approval, Latvia says
Defence official insists all NATO members must agree on the allies’ next move to aid Kyiv
No NATO country should send troops into Ukraine while war is raging with Russia, unless there is a consensus to do so within the alliance, says Latvian Defence Minister Andris Spruds.
It’s the latest pronunciation in a discussion that emerged out of last month’s Ukraine security summit in Paris, where French President Emmanuel Macron raised the prospect of sending troops to Ukraine to bolster the country’s effort to repel invading Russian forces.
Despite pushback from North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies, and a warning of nuclear war from Russian President Vladimir Putin, Macron has since maintained that nothing should be ruled out in NATO’s push to support Ukraine.
Canada, meanwhile, is open in principle to sending troops to train Ukrainian soldiers in that country, but only under the right conditions, far from the battlefield in a clear, non-combat role, Defence Minister Bill Blair has said.
For Spruds, whose Baltic country of less than two million people would stand on the front line of any NATO conflict with Russia, it is important to discuss all ways to back Ukraine in a war against the “existential threat” Russia poses.
But he said any effort must be “collective” and agreed upon by all of NATO’s members, which now number 32 with Sweden formally joining the alliance on Thursday.
“Especially when we decide on such serious steps about sending or not sending troops, this is absolutely crucial,” Spruds told the Star at the Latvian embassy in Ottawa. “This is a unanimous NATO decision,” he said.
More than two years into the war, NATO countries are trying to show continued support for Ukraine while defence and foreign policy leaders debate how the world has dramatically changed in the wake of the Russian invasion in February 2022.
During a two-day conference in Ottawa this week, experts like high-ranking Canadian diplomat Heidi Hulan spoke of increased competition amongst great powers and how, without co-operation with likeminded countries, such friction risks spilling into a “great power conflict” on the scale of a world war.
In the same discussion with Hulan, NATO official Angus Lapsley said members of the alliance know they must get ready for the possibility of conflict by significantly increasing defence spending to levels not seen since the Cold War.
Yet at the same time, societies across the alliance are dealing with what Spruds called “fatigue” after supporting Ukraine over two years of brutal war, as well as “shades of grey” over the degree to which Russian aggression is seen as a major threat.
He also said he welcomed signs from Canada that it is willing to increase its defence spending to the NATO target of two per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), although an official from Blair’s office confirmed Ottawa still has no timeline to achieve that goal, even as the military budget is slated to increase from around $30 billion in the coming fiscal year to almost $40 billion in 2026-2027.
In 2023, NATO estimated that Canadian defence spending that year would be around 1.38 per cent of GDP.
Both Blair and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have said Canada must do more to expand its military capabilities, as the Canadian Armed Forces grapples with a personnel shortage that exceeded 15,000 members (including regular and reserve forces) by the end of 2023, which combined with aging equipment is hampering the readiness of the army, navy and air force.
In his conversation with the Star, Spruds repeatedly expressed gratitude for Canada’s role in NATO, in particular how its army leads the alliance’s battle group in Latvia.
He welcomed Canada’s plan to more than double the number of its soldiers stationed in Latvia by 2026, from 1,000 to 2,200, and praised Ottawa for recently signing onto a joint Latvia-United Kingdom initiative to produce and provide more combat drones to Ukraine.
“The Canadian commitment is strong,” he said.