He noted Thursday’s announcement by Denmark and the Netherlands that they plan to provide Ukraine with at least another 14 refurbished Leopard 2 battle tanks from early 2024.
He added that he expected countries to “make new announcements of concrete military support to Ukraine” at a meeting in Germany on Friday.
The fighting in recent months has become a war of attrition, with neither side able to gain momentum. But Ukraine is expected to launch a counteroffensive in coming weeks, and it has recently received sophisticated weapons from its Western allies.
NATO has no official presence in Ukraine and provides only provides nonlethal support to Kyiv, but Stoltenberg has been the strong voice of the alliance throughout the war.
A procession of international leaders has made the journey to Kyiv over the last year, and the former Norwegian prime minister is one of the last major Western figures to do so.
NATO, formed to counter the Soviet Union, has long feared being dragged into a wide war with nuclear-armed Russia, but as the West has moved from hesitantly providing helmets and uniforms to tanks, warplanes and advanced missile systems, high-level visits have become routine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that preventing Ukraine from joining NATO remains one of the goals of what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in the country.
Speaking in a conference call with reporters, Peskov said that Ukraine’s accession would pose a “serious, significant threat to our country, to our country’s security”.
Earlier this month, Finland joined the alliance, setting aside decades of neutrality in a historic realignment of Europe’s post-Cold War security landscape.
While NATO says it poses no threat to Russia, the Nordic country’s accession dealt a major political blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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Finland’s membership doubles Russia’s border with the world’s biggest security alliance.
Neighbouring Sweden is expected to join in coming months, too, possibly by the time President Joe Biden and his NATO counterparts meet in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius in July.
The alliance has focused on bolstering defences on its own territory to dissuade Putin from attacking any member country.
Under NATO’s collective security guarantee, an attack on one member country is considered to be an attack on them all.
On Friday, Stoltenberg will attend a Ukraine defence contact group meeting at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
