Nato to beef up eastern flank
BRUSSELS: Nato agreed at emergency talks on Thursday to further beef up its land, sea and air forces on its eastern flank near Ukraine and Russia after President Vladimir Putin ordered a military offensive in Ukraine.
“We are deploying additional defensive land and air forces to the eastern part of the alliance, as well as additional maritime assets,” Nato ambassadors said in a statement. “We have increased the readiness of our forces to respond to all contingencies.”
Countries closest to the conflict - Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland - requested rare consultations under Article 4 of Nato’s founding treaty, which can be launched when “the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the (Nato) parties is threatened.”
“We have decided, in line with our defensive planning to protect all allies, to take additional steps to further strengthen deterrence and defence across the Alliance,” the envoys said. “Our measures are and remain preventive, proportionate and non-escalatory.”
While some of Nato’s 30 member countries are supplying arms, ammunition and other equipment to Ukraine, Nato as an organisation isn’t. It won’t launch any military action in support of Ukraine, which is a close partner but has no prospect of joining.
China refuses to call attack an ‘invasion’
China on Thursday repeated its call for talks to resolve the situation in Ukraine but refused to call Russia’s actions in the eastern European state an “invasion” and instead criticised the US and its allies for worsening the crisis.
Sidestepping a question on whether the Russian military’s attack on Ukraine early on Thursday was an invasion, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying instead said the “historical context is complicated” and that the current situation is “caused by all kinds of factors”.
“China is closely following the latest developments,” Hua said on Thursday, adding: “We still hope that the parties concerned will not shut the door to peace and engage instead in dialogue and consultation and prevent the situation from further escalating.”
China has blamed the US and its western allies in recent weeks for “hyping up” the crisis, with Hua saying at an earlier foreign ministry briefing on
Wednesday that the US was “adding fuel to the fire”.
Chinese official media has continued to call the full-throttle attack on Ukraine by Russia as a “special military operation”, the phrase used by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Zhang Jun, Chinese ambassador to the UN, called on all parties involved in the crisis to remain restrained and avoid escalating the situation any further.