Nato\u2019s secretary general has said this week\u2019s Madrid summit will agree the alliance\u2019s most significant transformation for a generation, putting 300,000 troops at high readiness in response to Russia\u2019s invasion of\u00a0Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Jens Stoltenberg said the military alliance\u2019s forces in the Baltic states and five other frontline countries would be increased \u201cup to brigade levels\u201d \u2013 doubled or trebled to between 3,000 and 5,000 troops.<\/p>\n
That would amount to \u201cthe biggest overhaul of our collective defence and deterrence since the cold war,\u201d Stoltenberg said before the meeting of the 30-country alliance, which runs from Tuesday to Thursday this week.<\/p>\n
The rapid-reaction Nato Response Force currently numbers up to 40,000, and the proposed change amounts to a broad revision in response to Russian militarisation. Under the plans, Nato will also move stocks of munitions and other supplies farther east, a transition due to be completed in 2023.<\/p>\n
The Norwegian secretary general conceded he could not make any promises about the progress of applications by Sweden and Finland to join Nato, because\u00a0objections raised by Turkey\u00a0to their membership remained unresolved.<\/p>\n
Stoltenberg said Turkey\u2019s president, Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, had agreed to meet the Swedish prime minister, Magdalena Andersson, and Finland\u2019s president, Sauli Niinist\u00f6, on Tuesday in Madrid to try to resolve the issue.<\/p>\n
But he played down hopes of a breakthrough at the meeting on the margins of the\u00a0Nato\u00a0event. \u201cIt\u2019s too early to say what kind of progress you can make by the summit,\u201d he told a press conference.<\/p>\n
Turkey has said it will block the applications of Sweden and Finland unless it receives satisfactory assurances that the Nordic countries are willing to address what it regards as support for Kurdish groups it designates as terrorist organisations.<\/p>\n
Later on Monday, Andersson said still she hoped a last-minute deal could be reached, after a day of contacts between officials of the three countries in Brussels.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy strong hope is that this dialogue can be successfully concluded in the near future, ideally before the summit,\u201d Andersson said, emphasising that\u00a0Sweden\u00a0\u201ccondemns terrorism in all its forms\u201d and that the insurgent Kurdish Workers\u2019 party (PKK) was recognised as a terror group in Sweden.<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, will address the summit on Wednesday morning, where he is expected to follow on from a\u00a0plea made on Monday at the G7 meeting\u00a0in Germany for western countries to provide arms so the war does not \u201cdrag on over winter\u201d.<\/p>\n
Stoltenberg said Nato would agree \u201ca strengthened, comprehensive assistance package\u201d for Kyiv, including immediate help to \u201csecure communications, anti-drone systems and fuel\u201d and longer-term assistance in transitioning from Soviet standard arms and equipment to their western equivalents.<\/p>\n
But while the\u00a0state of the war\u00a0is likely to dominate the summit, Nato itself will only offer non-lethal aid because its members do not want the alliance to enter into fully fledged war with Russia. Arms supplies are instead made by member states.<\/p>\n
Nato maintains eight battle groups across eastern\u00a0Europe, aimed at acting as an initial frontline defence in the event of a Russian invasion. Four are in the Baltic states and Poland, and these were supplemented by the creation of four more in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia after the attack on Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Germany said this month it would contribute a brigade of troops to defend\u00a0Lithuania, where the country leads a 1,000-member battle group, although it emerged that the bulk of the extra 3,500 Berlin intends to contribute would be based on its own soil, ready to move farther east if needed.<\/p>\n
Stoltenberg said he expected other Nato members to make similar announcements to defend the countries for which they are responsible. Extra troop numbers would be made up by \u201cpre-assigned forces in their home country\u201d who would regularly exercise in the countries to which they had been linked, he added.<\/p>\n
Britain contributes about 1,700 troops to a multinational battle group it leads in\u00a0Estonia. The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, said nearly a fortnight ago that it was highly likely the UK would assign hundreds more troops in support of Estonia.<\/p>\n
But Stoltenberg said there would not be a one-size-fits-all model, suggesting that not every battle group would be increased to the size of a full brigade. Canada leads the battle group in\u00a0Latvia, where it contributes 700 troops, while the US is responsible for Poland.<\/p>\n
Nato released figures showing that defence spending among its 30 members was expected to increase by 1.2% in real terms in 2022, the slowest growth rate in eight successive years of growth.<\/p>\n
Nine countries are projected to exceed the 2% of GDP target, led by Greece on 3.76% and the US on 3.47% with Britain sixth on 2.12%, down marginally on the two previous years. France spends 1.9% and Germany 1.44%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nato\u2019s secretary general has said this week\u2019s Madrid summit will agree the alliance\u2019s most significant transformation for a generation, putting 300,000 troops at high readiness in response to Russia\u2019s invasion of\u00a0Ukraine. Jens Stoltenberg said the military alliance\u2019s forces in the Baltic states and five other frontline countries would be increased \u201cup to brigade levels\u201d \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":19836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[6850,6728,11611,5522,5304,7119,8989,5307,1904,1257,1953,7711,5341,9506,5692,6621,12310,5335,5575,6569,3577,462,1237,66,5993,6543,5626,12773,5252,9907,8145,5342,12186,7181,9833,5572,7806,4802,7968,9157,11973,12727,837,3805,3174,8709,3457,5217,5760,5618,8840,1378,9209,11089,9151,7609,9178,2570,12605,5180,6885,6348,6886,5251,3954,8964,594,6874],"class_list":["post-23915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-aid","tag-alliance","tag-applications","tag-arms","tag-attack","tag-ben-wallace","tag-berlin","tag-britain","tag-brussels","tag-bulgaria","tag-canada","tag-cold","tag-cold-war","tag-drone","tag-estonia","tag-europe","tag-exercise","tag-finland","tag-france","tag-fuel","tag-future","tag-g7","tag-gdp","tag-germany","tag-greece","tag-growth","tag-hungary","tag-increase","tag-invasion","tag-jens-stoltenberg","tag-kurdish","tag-kyiv","tag-latvia","tag-lithuania","tag-meeting","tag-military","tag-model","tag-nato","tag-nine","tag-norwegian","tag-one","tag-package","tag-poland","tag-president","tag-prime-minister","tag-romania","tag-russia","tag-russian","tag-slovakia","tag-soldiers","tag-strong","tag-sweden","tag-swedish","tag-terror","tag-terrorism","tag-terrorist","tag-troops","tag-turkey","tag-uk","tag-ukraine","tag-ukraines-president","tag-us","tag-volodymyr-zelenskiy","tag-war","tag-will","tag-winter","tag-who","tag-zelenskiy"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}