2024-09-14 12:30:24
NATO could have done more to arm Ukraine to try to prevent a Russian invasion in 2022, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAC), quoted by Reuters.
Asked what was the worst day of his 10-year tenure as NATO head, Stoltenberg said it was February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Then he clarified that Moscow’s war against Kiev did not start in 2022, but in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea, BTA reports.
“If Ukraine had been stronger militarily, Russia’s caution before attacking would have been greater. It is impossible to say whether it would have been enough. On my first visit to Ukraine in 2015, I visited the training center there. The US, Canada and Britain trained soldiers there, we as NATO did not. In general, our training and equipment was quite limited. We could do a lot more,” the alliance secretary general said.
Stoltenberg points to the time when Finland and Sweden joined NATO as the best in his career at the top post in the alliance.
He noted the reluctance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to provide weapons that Kiev had requested before a full-scale Russian invasion due to fears that tensions with Russia would escalate.
“Now we are arming Ukraine for war, then we could have been arming Ukraine to prevent war,” Stoltenberg pointed out.
Since the start of the war, non-NATO Kiev has received one weapon system after another from its allies after initial hesitation, Reuters noted.
Stoltenberg, a former prime minister of Norway, will step down in October from his NATO post, which he has held since 2014. In June, it was announced that former Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte would be the next head of the pact.
In the interview, Stoltenberg stated that the end of the war in Ukraine will only be put on the negotiating table.
“I still believe in dialogue with Russia combined with protection and deterrence. We have to be strong to have a meaningful dialogue. Of course, there is much less room for that, almost non-existent compared to 2014. One of the first my big projects as Secretary General was to activate the NATO-Russia Council, which had not met for a long time. One thing is clear: in order to end this war, at a certain point there must be a dialogue with Russia based on Ukrainian power,” Stoltenberg noted in the interview.
He declined to confirm that he would take over the chairmanship of the Munich Security Conference from German diplomat Christoph Heusgen after he leaves his NATO post. Stoltenberg told the FAC that he had “many options” and would like to settle in Oslo.