Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg held a Pre-ministerial press conference ahead of the meetings of NATO Ministers of Foreign Affairs in Brussells. Among other topics re referred to the possibility of Ukraine war to escalate into war between Russia and NATO.
“Fundamentally, NATO has two main tasks when it comes to the war of aggression against Ukraine. One is to support Ukraine, as we have done since the beginning of the war, and actually many Allies have provided significant support to Ukraine before the full-fledged invasion. And we continue to provide support to Ukraine. The other main task is to prevent this conflict from turning into a full-fledged war between Russia and NATO because that will cause even more suffering and death and destruction. And we are preventing escalation in this war by sending a very clear message to Moscow that we are ready to defend every inch of NATO territory.
And we have demonstrated that not only words but also in deeds by increasing our military presence in eastern part of the Alliance. We have doubled the number of battlegroups, we have high readiness armed forces, and we also deployed more air and naval forces in the eastern part of the Alliance. We do this not to provoke a conflict, but to prevent the conflict and to make sure that there is no room for miscalculation or misunderstanding in Moscow about our readiness to defend Allies. This is fundamentally the same as NATO has done for almost 75 years: pursuing peace [and] preventing war by having a credible deterrence and defence. And that's what we continue to do: to make sure that Russia does not go further and actually seek a solution to the conflict in Ukraine where Ukraine prevails as a sovereign independent state”, Stoltenberg said.
