NATO Deputy-General Secretary Mircea Geoana says that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s month-old “barbaric war” against Ukraine is a war he cannot win.
In an interview with The Associated Press, the former Romanian foreign minister and ambassador to the United States added that NATO would be “forced to take appropriate measures” in the event of a chemical or nuclear attack, which follows a string of ominous comments from Moscow officials who refuse to rule out their use.
He declined to say what those measures would be.
“NATO is a defensive alliance, but also it’s a nuclear alliance,” he said. “If they will be using chemical weapons or other kinds of higher-end systems against Ukraine, this will be changing fundamentally the nature of the war that Mr. Putin has waged against Ukraine.
I can guarantee that NATO is ready to respond proportionately,” he added.
Geoana said Russia’s attack on a theater in the besieged port city of Mariupol, which Ukrainian authorities said Friday killed about 300 civilians, is “another proof that Putin’s war is a war that is unprovoked, illogical, and also barbarian.”
“We hope that Mr. Putin will not go even further down the road of war crimes, and even more devastation against a sovereign nation,” he said.
But the brutal war that Russia has waged since Feb. 24, is having the opposite effect to what Putin hoped for, the NATO official said, and has only united the West and worked to bolster the 30-nation defensive alliance.
At a NATO summit on Thursday, alliance leaders agreed to launch four new Eastern Flank battlegroups — which usually number around 1,000-1,500 troops — to Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
Geoana said the combination of harsh economic and individual sanctions on Russia and big losses militarily may eventually make Putin rethink his offensive on Ukraine.
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