NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced on Friday 4 March that the Alliance would not take part in the conflict in Ukraine.
While noting that the Allies were supporting Ukraine, including with military equipment, and that since 2014 they had provided training to the Ukrainian army, the Secretary General said that NATO “will not be a party to the conflict”, that it would not intervene directly.
“NATO does not seek war with Russia”, he said.
Speaking to the media after an extraordinary meeting of the foreign ministers of the allied countries, Finland, Sweden and the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Mr Stoltenberg described the Russian invasion as “the worst military aggression in Europe for decades”, saying that “the coming days could be worse (...) as Russian armed forces bring in heavier weapons and continue their attacks across the country”.
This view is shared by the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. He said that based on what is known about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s methods, particularly in Chechnya and Syria, and what we see on the ground - the encirclement of cities and the bombing of urban areas - “the suffering is likely to get worse”.
Despite the situation on the ground, the ministers decided “that there should be no NATO aircraft operating in Ukrainian airspace or troops operating on Ukrainian territory”, Mr Stoltenberg explained. NATO will therefore not set up a no-fly zone, as requested by the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky. The Secretary General of the Alliance explained that the only way to implement such a zone would be to send in allied aircraft and to “enforce it by shooting down Russian aircraft”.
While saying he understood Ukrainian “despair”, Mr Stoltenberg therefore felt that a NATO intervention in Ukraine “could end in all-out war in Europe”.
“We have a responsibility to ensure that this conflict does not escalate and spread beyond Ukraine, because that would be even more devastating and dangerous, with even more human suffering”, he said, adding that the Alliance’s “essential task” was to ensure the security of its members.
“One of the responsibilities we have... is to make sure that the war does not spread beyond Ukraine”, Mr Blinken said, adding that sending NATO planes to stop Russian planes would inevitably trigger a war with Moscow.
Mr Stoltenberg said the Allies remained committed to keeping the channels of diplomacy and de-escalation open to avoid any inadvertent escalation, misunderstanding or miscalculation.
According to the Secretary General, the Allies also discussed the need to provide more support to partners that may be at risk, including Georgia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, but no concrete decisions were taken. The Allies also decided to strengthen their coordination and information sharing with Finland and Sweden, which now participate in all NATO consultations on the crisis.
Call for peace
Beyond the operational aspect, Mr Stoltenberg called on Mr Putin to “stop this war immediately, withdraw all his forces from Ukraine unconditionally and engage in real diplomacy, right now”. He said that the minimum would be to reach agreement on a humanitarian corridor to get civilians out and humanitarian aid in, welcoming all efforts to reach such an agreement.
Mr Stoltenberg recalled that this was “President Putin’s war”, “a war he chose, planned, and is waging against a peaceful country”. He welcomed the action taken by the International Criminal Court, saying that Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko should be held accountable for the crimes they have allegedly committed.
For his part, High Representative of the Union Josep Borrell considered it important to launch the OSCE’s ‘Moscow Mechanism’ and to send monitoring missions to see what acts can be considered war crimes. The day before, the OSCE announced it would send such a mission.
Asked about the fighting around the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, Mr Stoltenberg said that “the reckless actions around the plant only underline the danger of this war”.
According to the Ukrainian authorities, Russian tanks set fire to a training building and a laboratory, but no radioactive leakage was found. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant with Mathieu Bion)