NATO ministers discuss boosting Ukraine — and avoiding a wider war

Over the past two months, the 30 member alliance has sent thousands of extra troops to its eastern flank and activated NATO’s Response Force for the first time. Its members have also sent tons of ammunition and weaponry into Ukraine.

Stoltenberg noted Wednesday as he arrived at the meeting that there are hundreds of thousands of forces on heightened alert across the alliance, including 100,000 U.S. troops in Europe and about 40,000 troops under direct NATO command, mostly in the eastern part of the alliance.

"NATO has a responsibility to ensure that this crisis does not escalate beyond Ukraine,” he said.

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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin emphasized the United States’ “ironclad” commitment to NATO’s Article 5, which requires members to go to the defense of any member that comes under attack.

The United States is expected to press allies to help expand the arsenal of weapons available to Ukrainian forces, after coming under fire for scuttling Poland’s attempts to transfer MiG-29 fighter planes to Ukraine. U.S. officials say they are particularly keen to procure the transfer of more sophisticated air defenses, such as the Russian-made S-300 system which several NATO countries possess in their arsenals.

The NATO ministers will also discuss a number of concrete measures to reinforce allies’ security for the longer term. That could include deploying “substantially more forces in the eastern part of the alliance,” Stoltenberg noted on Tuesday in remarks ahead of the meeting, as well as increased air and naval deployments and strengthened air and missile defense systems.

That will require major increases in defense spending by allied countries, he stressed — something the United States has been demanding for years and which now appears more likely in light of the new threat posed by Russia.

But a big focus also will be to ensure that NATO doesn’t get drawn into the Ukraine war.

NATO and U.S. officials have repeatedly stressed that NATO is a defensive alliance, that it is not at war with Russia, and that it will not fight in Ukraine. They have also vowed to defend “every inch” of NATO territory. Russia’s missile attack Sunday on a Ukrainian training facility, just miles from the border of NATO member Poland illustrated the risk that a misfire in Ukraine could force NATO to react.

“The risk of incidents if there are hostile actions at the border is really high,” said Stefano Stefanini, Italy’s former ambassador to NATO. “If there was a misfire, NATO could be at war.”

Douglas Lute, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and former U.S. ambassador to NATO, said the presence of NATO forces is partly about assuring allies, partly about deterring Russia.

“These troops are not moving to Portugal in the west, they are going to states on NATO’s eastern flank to assure allies that the words of the NATO treaty actually mean something, that when these allies feel threatened, NATO’s got their back,” he said.

“This is also a message across the border to Russia that NATO means what they’ve said: NATO would defend every inch of NATO territory,” he continued. “The brightest red line in Europe today is the red line that demarcates NATO’s borders.”

On Sunday, Russia came within just 15 miles of that line, raining missiles down on a military training facility in Western Ukraine, near the Polish border. The attack killed at least 35 people and injured more than 100, according to Ukrainian officials. NATO troops had in the recent past trained Ukrainian forces at the facility, known as the International Peacekeeping and Security Center, but NATO officials said that no alliance forces were present at the time of the attack.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said the site was being used to house foreign fighters and a storage base for weapons and equipment being sent to Ukraine by “foreign countries.” A day earlier, the Kremlin warned that it viewed Western weapons shipments “legitimate targets.”

On Monday, a senior U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon, said the strike did not disrupt shipments of Western military aid.

Rachel Rizzo, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, said the strike was more of a warning than a direct test of NATO’s commitment to Article 5. The irony, she said, is that Putin used the pretext of wanting fewer NATO troops to wage war, but will end up with the opposite.

“If he wanted fewer troops, well all he is going to get is NATO troops,” she said.