NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced on Friday that the group would be providing more weapons to support Ukraine in the face of Russia’s military assault, and deploying parts of its combat-ready response force.
Soltenberg accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of trying to topple the “democratically-elected government in Ukraine.”
“We see rhetoric, the messages, which is strongly indicating that the aim is to remove the democratically-elected government in Kiev,” he announced after a meeting with NATO leaders.
Allies are committed to continuing to provide support for Ukraine, Stoltenberg added, including air defense systems.
“We are now deploying the NATO response force for the first time in the context of collective defense. We speak about thousands of troops. We speak about air and maritime capabilities,” he also said. The response force is made up of special operations forces and land, air, and maritime forces. Only part of this 40,000 contingent is being deployed.
Russia was slapped with numerous international economic sanctions this week from NATO members like the US and UK. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Friday that he was directly sanctioning Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. US President Joe Biden also announced this week thousands of additional US troops were being deployed to Germany to provide support, though he insisted they will not be fighting in Ukraine.
Moscow announced their military offense on Thursday, saying they were moving forces into Ukraine to “demilitarize and denazify” the area after Putin had recognized two breakaway territories as part of Russia. The newly recognized Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR) People’s Republics have sought Moscow’s aid, claiming they were facing an attack from Kiev, though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said no such plan was in place. On Friday, he said he was willing to negotiate to avoid further “human fatalities.”