NATO members on Tuesday have reaffirmed their support for Ukraine during talks with the country’s officials held in response to Russia’s launch of an experimental intermediate-range ballistic missile.
Ambassadors representing NATO’s 32 member countries were briefed by senior Ukrainian officials after Kyiv called a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council, a forum for cooperation.
“The chief of the defence intelligence of Ukraine and acting commander of the air force joined the meeting online and briefed the allies on the details of the attack and its possible consequences,” Nataliia Galibarenko, Ukraine’s ambassador to NATO, said in a statement.
“They emphasized to the partners that this outrageous attack was a blatant demonstration of force by Russia and a fruitless attempt to intimidate the allies,” she added.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday Moscow struck a Ukrainian military facility with a new intermediate-range, hypersonic ballistic missile in response to the U.S. and UK’s allowing Kyiv to strike Russian territory with advanced Western weapons.
NATO said in a statement following the talks that “the attack, which targeted Dnipro, is seen as another attempt by Russia to terrorise the civilian population in Ukraine and intimidate those who support Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia’s illegal and unprovoked aggression”.
A top NATO military official on Monday urged businesses to be prepared for a wartime scenario and adjust their production and distribution lines accordingly, to be less vulnerable to blackmail from countries such as Russia and China.
“If we can make sure that all crucial services and goods can be delivered no matter what, then that is a key part of our deterrence,” the chair of NATO‘s military committee, Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, said in Brussels.
Speaking at an event of the European Policy Centre think tank, he described deterrence as going far beyond military capability alone, since all available instruments could and would be used in war.
“We’re seeing that with the growing number of sabotage acts, and Europe has seen that with energy supply,” Bauer said.
“We thought we had a deal with Gazprom, but we actually had a deal with Mr Putin. And the same goes for Chinese-owned infrastructure and goods. We actually have a deal with (Chinese President) Xi (Jinping).”
The top NATO military official noted western dependencies on supplies from China, with 60% of all rare earth materials produced and 90% processed there. He said chemical ingredients for sedatives, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and low blood pressure medicines were also coming from China.
“Businesses need to be prepared for a wartime scenario and adjust their production and distribution lines accordingly. Because while it may be the military who wins battles, it’s the economies that win wars.”
Bauer also said that Russia’s land forces are bigger now than at the time of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 but their quality has decreased since then.
“The quality of those forces has gone down,” the top NATO military official said, pointing to the state of the force’s equipment and the level of training of Russia’s soldiers.
Team Bharatshakti
(With inputs from Reuters)
