The president of the United States, Joe Biden, concluded his two-day visit to Poland on Wednesday -with a previous stage in Ukraine- with the promise of “unwavering support” from the United States for the protection of the countries on the eastern flank of NATO, the most geographically close to a Russian threat when one year has passed this Friday since the start of the war launched by Vladimir Putin against Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
“You are on the front lines of our collective defense; you know better than anyone what we are at stake in this conflict, not only for Ukraine, but for the freedom of democracies throughout Europe and around the world”, Biden at the beginning of a meeting in Warsaw with leaders of the Bucharest Nine ( B9), as the group of countries on the eastern flank of NATO is called: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
“America’s commitment to NATO, I have said it many times, and I will say it again, is absolutely clear; Article 5 is a sacred commitment the United States has made,” Joe Biden said. We will defend literally every inch of NATO.”
“You are on the front lines of our collective defense,” Biden told NATO eastern flank leaders
Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty says that “an armed attack against one or more of them [las naciones signatarias], which takes place in Europe or in North America, will be considered as an attack directed against all of them”. It is an article that, in any case, and despite the semantic power of its wording, is conceived as a deterrent against attacks rather than as a military response mechanism. Article 5 has only been used once: it was invoked by the United States in 2001 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Joe Biden and NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg with leaders of the nine countries on the eastern flank of the Atlantic Alliance, on February 22 in Warsaw.
Before entering the meeting, held at the presidential palace in Warsaw, Biden also said to questions from the journalists present that Putin made “a big mistake” by suspending Russian participation in START III or New START, the latest nuclear disarmament treaty. still in force between Russia and the United States, which was signed in 2010. This is the first direct response from the US leader to that announcement by the Russian president.
The objective of the meeting in the Polish capital, in which NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also participated, was “to reaffirm the United States’ unwavering support for the security of the Alliance,” the White House said in a statement. The meeting was attended by, among other Eastern European leaders: the presidents of Romania (Klaus Iohannis), Poland (Andrzej Duda), Slovakia (Zuzana Caputová), Bulgaria (Rumen Radev), Estonia (Alar Karis), Latvia, (Egils Levits) , Lithuania (Gitanas Nauséda) and Hungary (Katalin Novák).
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The Romanian Iohannis said that the leaders of the eastern flank of the Alliance “have a duty to remain firm in the defense of peace” in their countries and insisted on military support for Ukraine for as long as it takes for it to “win the war”. .
In a tweet prior to the meeting, the Lithuanian Nauséda had called for greater US and NATO involvement and more military support for Kyiv. “Let’s give Ukraine all the weapons it needs to defeat the aggressor,” Nauséda tweeted. The Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, will host the Atlantic Alliance summit next July. But not all members of the Bucharest Nine have been as enthusiastic in advocating military support for Ukraine, especially Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.
With the exception of Hungary, the countries on the eastern flank of the Atlantic Alliance support further arming Ukraine
On Tuesday night, Biden met with Moldovan President Maia Sandu, who last week asserted that Moscow is plotting to overthrow and destabilize Moldovan democracy, although she later ruled out an imminent threat.
Joe Biden flew back to Washington on Wednesday afternoon, after two days in Poland and a surprise trip to Kyiv (it was on Monday), in a trip designed to take place just before the exact date of the anniversary of the war, but not the same day On Tuesday in Warsaw, Joe Biden had delivered a public speech in which he assured that “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, never!” During the visit to Kyiv, the US president met with Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky and announced almost half a billion additional dollars in aid to Ukraine.