NATO demands that Russia avoid escalation and reduce tensions with Ukraine

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday demanded that Russia avoid an escalation and reduce tensions in and around Ukraine, given the “great and unusual concentration of forces” by Moscow along the border of the former republic Soviet.

“We ask Russia to be transparent with its military activities, to reduce tensions and to avoid any escalation,” Stoltenberg told a press conference with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba, with whom he met today in Brussels.

The Norwegian politician stressed that in recent weeks there has been “a large and unusual concentration of Russian forces near the borders of Ukraine” and added that it is a situation similar to the military concentration of Moscow in Crimea and the Black Sea region. at the beginning of this year.

“We know that Russia has shown both the will and the ability to use military force against Ukraine before. We saw that when they illegally annexed Crimea and we have seen it for many years in the way they support the separatists in Donbas.” , he exposed.

He noted that the Alliance remains “vigilant”, monitors the situation “very closely” and maintains consultations among the allies, as well as with Ukraine and the European Union.

“Any other provocation or aggressive actions by Russia would be of grave concern,” he warned.

Stoltenberg stressed that NATO support for Ukraine “is not a threat to Russia” and added that the Alliance’s exercises in the Black Sea region are “defensive and transparent.”

The former Norwegian prime minister also said he hopes to “welcome” Kuleba at the NATO foreign ministers meeting to be held in Riga from November 30 to December 1.

The Secretary General reiterated NATO’s condemnation of the “instrumentalization” made by the Belarusian President Alexandr Lukashenko’s regime, “of vulnerable migrants”, which occurs at the same time as the Russian deployment with Ukraine.

“These are events that are happening at the same time. We also see tensions growing in parts of the Western Balkans, so there are many things happening at the same time and NATO has to be vigilant,” he said.

In any case, he said that there is no “imminent threat of any military aggression against NATO countries.”

“But we see a very difficult situation evolving on the border between a NATO ally, Poland, and Belarus, and we also see similar situations in Lithuania and Latvia,” he said.

Even so, he pointed out that it is up to the Alliance countries to decide whether to invoke article 4 of the founding treaty of NATO, according to which an ally can request consultations if its territorial integrity, political independence or security is threatened.

The Ukrainian minister assured that what Russia does on the border with his country “is not simply an increase in military forces”, since, as he said, those deployed in the spring “never really withdrew.”

“What we see now is a deteriorating situation in which Russia is showing that it can quickly activate the already accumulated troops and equipment and that any option, including the military, is on the table for the Russian leadership,” he said.

He noted that Moscow “continues to fuel the conflict in eastern Ukraine by supplying arms and troops, financing the administration of the occupation, issuing Russian passports to locals.”

“The military maneuvers in Russia, the energy crisis in Europe, the dramatic use of migrants as weapons on the borders of Poland and Lithuania with Belarus and the massive disinformation have to be seen as a complex of events, because they are all elements of the war. hybrid of Russia in the European and Euro-Atlantic community ”, he stressed. (I)