NATO has 'no plans to deploy forces to Ukraine': Stoltenberg

HELSINKI

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday said that the alliance had no plans to deploy forces to Ukraine, despite many of its members supplying Kiev with weapons since Russia's invasion.

"NATO has no plans to deploy forces to Ukraine," Stoltenberg said during a visit to Finland, adding that the alliance was seeking "long term financial commitment to ensure that we stand by Ukraine for as long as it takes".

"Over the last months, we have seen some gaps, some delays in the provision of military support to Ukraine," Stoltenberg said, adding: "we need to ensure that that doesn't happen again."

The visit marked Stoltenberg's first to Finland since the country joined NATO in April 2023, prompted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, thereby leaving decades of military non-alignment behind.

Stoltenberg's visit came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday joined Western leaders in France to commemorate D-Day.

While there, Zelensky is due to meet U.S. President Joe Biden for talks on how Ukraine can gain back ground after recent Russian advances.

Asked to comment on the risk of a Russian attack against a Nato member, Stoltenberg replied: "We don't see an imminent military threat against any NATO ally."

"This idea that there's a kind of a countdown to the next war is wrong."

'NATO needs more military equipment'

Meanwwhile, the alliance's top general Christopher Cavoli told AFP Thursday that NATO nations "need to build more" military equipment to face up to the growing threat from Russia.

"When it comes to military equipment... we need to build more, we need to expand our industrial base," Supreme Allied Commander Europe Cavoli said at D-Day 80th anniversary commemorations in Normandy.

But he added that NATO "is ready to do collective territorial defense", pointing to a vast exercise dubbed Steadfast Defender 24, which involved 90,000 allied troops across multiple European countries from January to May.

"We've shifted our focus entirely over the last couple of years, we used to do out-of-area operations, now we're focused on defending the territory of the alliance," Cavoli said.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Kyiv's Western-backed defense have shown the vast appetite of modern conflicts for ammunition and other equipment.

It has however taken time for defense manufacturers to ramp up output of items from artillery shells to vehicles and drones.

"We need to generate hardware more quickly. I think all the nations in the alliance realise that and are working on it," Cavoli said.

The general added that NATO is "going to take a very deliberate effort to study everything about the conflict so that we can develop from it".

He cited "innovative uses of hardware", such as the low-cost drones used by both Russia and Ukraine for reconnaissance and attack.

NATO troops would also be learning from "techniques and tactics" used on Ukrainian battlefields at a new "lessons learned" centre to be set up in Poland, Cavoli added.