NATO
March 15, 2022
On China, China should join the rest of the world condemning strongly the brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russia. And any support to Russia, military support or any other type of support, would actually help Russia….So China has an obligation as a member of the UN Security Council to actually support and uphold international law. And the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a blatant violation of international law so we call on [China] to clearly condemn the invasion and of course not support Russia. And we are closely monitoring any signs of support from China to Russia.
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We need to invest more in advanced conventional capabilities including fifth generation aircraft, and I welcome the German decision to invest in fifth generation aircraft. We need also to increase the readiness and our ability to monitor and detect. And of course we also need to make sure that NATO’s nuclear deterrent remains safe and secure and effective. That’s exactly what we’re doing when we are now making sure that we exercise and ensure the effectiveness of our nuclear deterrent.
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Any use of chemical weapons will be a violation of international law, will be a violation of the ban that….We have also seen that Russia has supported the Assad regime in Syria and helped to facilitate the use of chemical weapons several times in Syria. And any use of chemical weapons is absolutely unacceptable and therefore it is also extremely important that Russia understands that it is unacceptable if they consider any use of chemical weapons. And we are also very vigilant about the possibility of them trying to stage some kind of pretext, false flag operation to provide an excuse for any type of use of chemical weapons.
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And now we have seen them accusing Ukraine and also NATO Allies [of] producing and developing chemical weapons and that’s an absolute lie. And therefore it also makes us a bit concerned about the possibility that they are actually planning to do that. And the President of the United States and other Allies also made it very clear that if they use chemical weapons, there will be a high price to pay. But I will not speculate about any military response from the NATO side except for saying very clearly that NATO’s main responsibility is to make sure that we defend and protect all Allies.
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So we have already increased significantly our presence in the eastern part of the Alliance, also in the Black Sea region with more troops. I went to Romania a couple of weeks ago and I met with US forces, German forces and other forces there who actually increased their presence. And now the lead elements of the NATO Response Force have been deployed to Romania, French troops, and this demonstrates that there is all of this significant increased military presence in the eastern part of the Alliance. We speak about 40,000 forces on high readiness in the direct NATO command, then we have the national forces, we have also bilateral arrangements. So in total, this is a quite significant presence, both in Romania and the southeast of the Alliance but also in the Baltic region. This is our immediate response. And as I said the battlegroup is under establishment with the French-led VJTF element.
Anti-bellum 