Nato to put 300,000 troops on high alert in response to Russia threat

Alliance’s leader says this week’s summit will agree its most significant transformation in a generation

• Russia-Ukraine war – live updates

Dan Sabbagh Defence and security editorMon 27 Jun 2022 11.05 EDT

Nato’s secretary general has said this week’s Madrid summit will agree the alliance’s most significant transformation for a generation, putting 300,000 troops at high readiness in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Jens Stoltenberg said the military alliance’s forces in the Baltic states and five other frontline countries would be increased “up to brigade levels” – doubled or trebled to between 3,000 and 5,000 troops.

That would amount to “the biggest overhaul of our collective defence and deterrence since the cold war,” Stoltenberg said before the meeting of the 30-country alliance, which runs from Tuesday to Thursday this week.

The rapid-reaction Nato Response Force currently numbers up to 40,000, and the proposed change amounts to a broad revision in response to Russian militarisation. Under the plans, Nato will also move stocks of munitions and other supplies farther east, a transition due to be completed in 2023.

The Norwegian secretary general conceded he could not make any promises about the progress of applications by Sweden and Finland to join Nato, because objections raised by Turkey to their membership remained unresolved.

Stoltenberg said Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had agreed to meet the Swedish prime minister, Magdalena Andersson, and Finland’s president, Sauli Niinistö, on Tuesday in Madrid to try to resolve the issue.

But he played down hopes of a breakthrough at the meeting on the margins of the Nato event. “It’s too early to say what kind of progress you can make by the summit,” he told a press conference.

Turkey has said it will block the applications of Sweden and Finland unless it receives satisfactory assurances that the Nordic countries are willing to address what it regards as support for Kurdish groups it designates as terrorist organisations.

Later on Monday, Andersson said still she hoped a last-minute deal could be reached, after a day of contacts between officials of the three countries in Brussels.

“My strong hope is that this dialogue can be successfully concluded in the near future, ideally before the summit,” Andersson said, emphasising that Sweden “condemns terrorism in all its forms” and that the insurgent Kurdish Workers’ party (PKK) was recognised as a terror group in Sweden.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, will address the summit on Wednesday morning, where he is expected to follow on from a plea made on Monday at the G7 meeting in Germany for western countries to provide arms so the war does not “drag on over winter”.

Stoltenberg said Nato would agree “a strengthened, comprehensive assistance package” for Kyiv, including immediate help to “secure communications, anti-drone systems and fuel” and longer-term assistance in transitioning from Soviet standard arms and equipment to their western equivalents.

But while the state of the war is likely to dominate the summit, Nato itself will only offer non-lethal aid because its members do not want the alliance to enter into fully fledged war with Russia. Arms supplies are instead made by member states.

Nato maintains eight battle groups across eastern Europe, aimed at acting as an initial frontline defence in the event of a Russian invasion. Four are in the Baltic states and Poland, and these were supplemented by the creation of four more in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia after the attack on Ukraine.

Germany said this month it would contribute a brigade of troops to defend Lithuania, where the country leads a 1,000-member battle group, although it emerged that the bulk of the extra 3,500 Berlin intends to contribute would be based on its own soil, ready to move farther east if needed.

Stoltenberg said he expected other Nato members to make similar announcements to defend the countries for which they are responsible. Extra troop numbers would be made up by “pre-assigned forces in their home country” who would regularly exercise in the countries to which they had been linked, he added.

Britain contributes about 1,700 troops to a multinational battle group it leads in Estonia. The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, said nearly a fortnight ago that it was highly likely the UK would assign hundreds more troops in support of Estonia.

But Stoltenberg said there would not be a one-size-fits-all model, suggesting that not every battle group would be increased to the size of a full brigade. Canada leads the battle group in Latvia, where it contributes 700 troops, while the US is responsible for Poland.

Nato released figures showing that defence spending among its 30 members was expected to increase by 1.2% in real terms in 2022, the slowest growth rate in eight successive years of growth.

Nine countries are projected to exceed the 2% of GDP target, led by Greece on 3.76% and the US on 3.47% with Britain sixth on 2.12%, down marginally on the two previous years. France spends 1.9% and Germany 1.44%.

I write from Ukraine, where I’ve spent much of the past six months, reporting on the build-up to the conflict and the grim reality of war. It has been the most intense time of my 30-year career. In December I visited the trenches outside Donetsk with the Ukrainian army; in January I went to Mariupol and drove along the coast to Crimea; on 24 February I was with other colleagues in the Ukrainian capital as the first Russian bombs fell.

This is the biggest war in Europe since 1945. It is, for Ukrainians, an existential struggle against a new but familiar Russian imperialism. Our team of reporters and editors intend to cover this war for as long as it lasts, however expensive that may prove to be. We are committed to telling the human stories of those caught up in war, as well as the international dimension. But we can’t do this without the support of Guardian readers. It is your passion, engagement and financial contributions which underpin our independent journalism and make it possible for us to report from places like Ukraine.

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Thank you.

Luke Harding

Foreign correspondent

BREAKINGMacron, Scholz and Draghi meet with Zelenskyy in KyivBREAKINGWar-related food crisis to heighten record levels of displacement: UNBREAKINGSeverodonetsk fighters ignore Moscow’s calls to surrenderClick to pause breaking news tickerClose Breaking News Ticker

Visualising the fastest-growing refugee crises around the world

By Al Jazeera Staff

Published On 16 Jun 202216 Jun 2022

More than 100 million people have been forced to flee their homes due to conflict, climate change and persecution, according to a newly released global trends report by UNHCR.

The UN has warned that the ongoing food crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could force even more to flee their homes.

To put that in context, if the number of forcibly displaced people was a country, it would be the 15th-most populated country in the world.

Diane Ravitch’s blogRobert Kuttner: GOP on the Wrong Side of Public OutragedianeravitchMay 29 Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect is one of my favorite thinkers, and I am glad to share his latest with you. Republicans like to say, as Texas Governor Greg Abbott did, that this is not the time to “politicize” the issue of gun control, in the midst of a massacre of students and their teachers. But, if this is not the right time, when is? This horrific event was not an accident, it was the result of Republican policies that put the rights of gun owners over the right to life. Republicans have used politics to put the lives of children, teachers, grocery shoppers, and other citizens at risk. Now is the time to say so. Republicans on the Wrong Side of Public Outrage Their opposition to gun laws and assault on women’s health should be center-stage issues. Here’s the bizarre thing about mass gun violence that takes the lives of schoolchildren and the likely reversal of Roe v. Wade: Public opinion is not with the right. It is overwhelmingly in favor of banning civilian purchase of assault weapons. It is overwhelmingly in favor of keeping Roe. And yet a party that espouses these and other extreme views is on the verge of taking over the country. If we let it. What can prevent this grim fate is resolute leadership that stands with most Americans—and also hangs this lunacy around the necks of Republicans and makes them squirm. In his first statement on the mass murder, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott noted that the shooter was dead. You can imagine how much comfort that offers parents.Other Republicans have offered reassurance by pointing out that the killer acted alone. No, he did not. He had multiple Republican accomplices who keep blocking gun control and valorizing guns with open-carry laws.They also like to term the Texas shooting a “tragedy.” No, it was not. It was preventable homicide of children. Political allies of abortion zealots who worry about the alleged rights of the unborn need to look to the rights of living children.President Biden was at his best in his statement on the Texas school shooting. He called out both the gun lobby and the gun manufacturers. He ridiculed gun nuts who conflate hunting rifles with assault weapons.When we passed the assault weapons ban, mass shootings went down. When the law expired, mass shootings tripled. The idea that an 18-year-old kid can walk into a gun store and buy two assault weapons is just wrong. What in God’s name do you need an assault weapon for except to kill someone? Deer aren’t running through the forest with Kevlar vests on, for God’s sake. It’s just sick. Biden’s expression of appalled sympathy was from the heart. “To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away,” he said. Biden has been there.Maybe the president’s first statement on the shooting was not the time to call out the Republicans who resist even the mildest gun legislation. But this is no time to temporize for fear of rural voters or pro-gun Democrats. The vast majority of citizens are sick of this carnage.Biden needs to follow up by sending Congress legislation that goes beyond poll-tested “commonsense” measures like background checks and the extension of existing regulations to gun shows. We need to ban all military weapons, and to identify the wall-to-wall opposition with Republicans, and dare them to block it.Biden is facing political headwinds on inflation and supply shortages. But on gun control and women’s health, public opinion is with him, and Republicans look like fools. There is nothing shameful about maximizing the partisan advantage. In a democracy, that’s what leadership is all about.~ ROBERT KUTTNER