The Secretary General confirmed that then the alliance began to carry out the most significant buildup of its military forcesBRUSSELS, February 13.
/tass/. The year of the conflict in Ukraine has not fundamentally changed NATO, the alliance has been preparing for it since 2014. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg acknowledged this at a press conference in Brussels on Monday.
"He did not change NATO, he only demonstrated the importance of NATO. Since 2014, NATO has begun to conduct the most significant buildup of its military forces, since the war did not begin in February last year, it began in 2014. And then the adaptation of NATO began," he said, answering the question of how the year of the conflict in Ukraine changed NATO.
"[Since 2014] we have increased the number of Response Forces, the number of military exercises, raised defense spending for the first time in many years. That is, it did not fundamentally change NATO, but only confirmed the importance of the alliance and the importance of the unity of its member countries," he said Stoltenberg.
"Therefore, when on the morning of the invasion we decided to increase our military presence on the borders of the alliance, we did it on the basis of preparations that had already been carried out in previous years. We have decided to create NATO combat groups (in the Baltic States and Poland - approx. TASS) in 2016, we also increased our military presence in the months leading up to the conflict, as it was not a surprise to us. We knew that the conflict would happen, and we were preparing for it," he said Stoltenberg.
The requirement to exclude the possibility of Ukraine's admission to NATO, the cessation of the approach of military infrastructure to Russia's borders and the provision of clear security guarantees to Russia were the main demands of Moscow at the emergency talks with the United States and NATO, which preceded the start of a Special military operation in Ukraine and took place in January 2022 in Brussels and Washington.
