(CN) — In celebrating the 75th anniversary of the signing of the NATO treaty on April 4, 1949, the military alliance on Thursday vowed to increase its support to Kyiv and said it was determined to ensure Russia's defeat in Ukraine.
On Wednesday and Thursday, NATO foreign ministers including U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met at the alliance's Brussels headquarters to lay out strategies to help Ukraine.
Blinken said support for Kyiv remained “rock solid” and he vowed war-torn Ukraine will become a NATO member one day.
“Ukraine will become a member of NATO,” Blinken said. “Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership.”
In 2008, then-U.S. President George W. Bush stoked tensions with Moscow by saying Ukraine and Georgia, two former Soviet republics, would join NATO. Since then, tensions between Moscow and NATO have escalated with Russian President Vladimir Putin annexing parts of both neighboring nations.
At the Brussels summit, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg proposed setting up a NATO-controlled five-year fund worth more than $100 billion for Ukraine. He also said a U.S.-led coalition supporting Ukraine, known as the Ramstein Group, should be brought under NATO.
He did not provide details about the plans and there was disagreement among NATO members about how such a fund would function. Until now, NATO has been hesitant about taking a more active role in the conflict.
“The Ukrainians are not running out of courage, they are running out of ammunition,” Stoltenberg said about providing Ukraine with a more secure flow of weapons. He said NATO's support to Ukraine needed a “firmer and more enduring basis for the future.”
“A stronger NATO role in coordinating and providing support is a way to end this war in a way where Ukraine prevails,” Stoltenberg said.
Mostly, the proposals were seen as a way to safeguard Ukraine aid in case Donald Trump returns to the White House and seeks to withdraw U.S. support from Ukraine. Trump has said he would end the war “in one day” if he is re-elected. European governments are preparing to take a bigger role in Ukraine in case the U.S. steps back.
Western aid to Ukraine has slowed in recent months as doubts mount over whether Kyiv can win on the battlefield and war fatigue sets in among Western nations.
But Kyiv has not been abandoned. In February, the European Union agreed to provide Ukraine with a new aid package worth $54 billion and the U.S. Congress appears poised to overcome a Republican-led impasse over a new $61 billion military package for Ukraine.
So far, the U.S. and the EU have provided Ukraine with more than $168 billion, according to an analysis by the Kiel Institute, a German economic research think tank.
The U.S. aid package is vital for Kyiv because, unlike the EU package, it is slated to be spent on weapons, including long-range missiles.
The war in Ukraine is at a decisive point with Russian troops grinding down Ukraine's defensive lines. Russia has gained the upper hand due to its superior firepower and battlefield adjustments.
The risk of Russian advances in Ukraine and the possibility of a Russian victory are sparking vigorous debates among Western allies about how far they are willing to go in fighting Russia.
At the end of February, French President Emmanuel Macron said sending ground troops to Ukraine should not be taken off the table. The decision by Western leaders to not leave open the possibility of sending troops against Russia at the outset of the war is now being viewed as a mistake by some Western analysts.
While the rhetoric from the West is turning more bellicose, Moscow too is raising its saber-rattling tone. Recently, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia is “de facto” at war with the West.
On Thursday, Peskov echoed his previous comments.
“In fact, relations have now slipped to the level of direct confrontation” with NATO, he said.
He said NATO was “already involved in the conflict surrounding Ukraine [and continuing] to move towards our borders and expand its military infrastructure towards our borders.”
Last year, Finland abandoned its long-held neutrality and joined NATO, angering Russia.
The Kremlin says it will consider any Western troops in Ukraine legitimate targets and Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow will not hesitate to strike F-16 fighter jets used in combat in Ukraine even if they are stationed at NATO airbases.
Macron's shift in tone reflects the grim mood in Europe, where leaders are increasingly talking about the need to “prepare for war.”
Last week, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk issued a stark warning about the European Union being in a state of “prewar.”
“I know it sounds devastating, especially to people of the younger generation, but we have to mentally get used to the arrival of a new era. The prewar era,” he said in an interview with a group of reporters.
This week, Politico ran an article citing high-ranking Ukrainian military officials who warned Ukraine was set to lose the war due to Russia's military capacity and battlefield adjustments.
“There’s nothing that can help Ukraine now because there are no serious technologies able to compensate Ukraine for the large mass of troops Russia is likely to hurl at us,” a top-ranking military official told Politico. “We don’t have those technologies, and the West doesn’t have them as well in sufficient numbers.”
On the ground, Ukraine is struggling and its troops have retreated in several areas. On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy lowered the age of conscription from 27 to 25 because of the need for more soldiers at the front lines.
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.
Follow @cainburdeau
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