United Airlines flight 3613 was grounded Sunday at Burlington International Airport in Vermont after a bomb threat was found on a note left in a lavatory. The 65-passenger, 4:30 pm flight from Newark, New Jersey, was held for hours while officials searched for any sign the threat was real.
NBC reports that in a press conference, airport director of aviation Nic Longo said that roughly 20 minutes prior to its landing, the flight crew told Burlington’s control tower there was “a threat to the aircraft.” Longo did not offer specifics about the threat, but an NBC affiliate acquired a recording of the pilot of 3613 saying that a “flight attendant just came up and said that a passenger found a note … that said there was a bomb on board.”
Per emergency response protocols, the plane was sent to a special location to allow an assessment of the situation by the Vermont State Police bomb squad and additional local and federal authorities.
Passengers described K-9 units sweeping the plane, with one describing the experience as “scary.” Another, Phil Baruth, said that it was “unfair” that the threat “ruined everyone’s days.”
“Obviously someone a little deranged,” Baruth said. “On the other hand, authorities here handled everything perfectly and at no time did I feel unsafe.”
This is just the most recent threat of its kind to disrupt flights since late February. A threat on February 17 diverted an American Airlines flight in Texas and a Spirit Airlines flight was evacuated at a New Hampshire airport for a bomb threat on February 11.
In Burlington, according to NBC, investigators could not find a credible threat, and there were no arrests. The FBI is leading an ongoing investigation of the incident.
PARIS — Vegetarian sushi and rugby brought the leaders of Britain and France together after years of Brexit rows.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday held the two countries’ first bilateral summit in five years, amid warm words and wishes for closer post-Brexit cooperation.
“This is an exceptional summit, a moment of reunion and reconnection, that illustrates that we want to better speak to each other,” Macron told a joint press conference afterward. “We have the will to work together in a Europe that has new responsibilities.”
Most notably from London’s perspective, the pair agreed a new multi-annual financial framework to jointly tackle the arrival of undocumented migrants on small boats through the English Channel — in part funding a new detention center in France.
“The U.K. and France share a special bond and a special responsibility,” Sunak said. “When the security of our Continent is threatened, we will always be at the forefront of its defense.”
Macron congratulated Sunak for agreeing the Windsor Framework with the European Commission, putting an end to a long U.K.-EU row over post-Brexit trade rules in Northern Ireland, and stressing it marks a “new beginning of working more closely with the EU.”
“I feel very fortunate to be serving alongside you and incredibly excited about the future we can build together. Merci mon ami,” Sunak said.
It has been many years since the leaders of Britain and France were so publicly at ease with each other.
Sunak and Macron bonded over rugby, ahead of Saturday’s match between England and France, and exchanged T-shirts signed by their respective teams.
Later, they met alone at the Élysée Palace for more than an hour, only being joined by their chiefs of staff at the very end of the meeting, described as “warm and productive” by Sunak’s official spokesman. The pair, who spoke English, had planned to hold a shorter one-to-one session, but they decided to extend it, the spokesman said.
They later met with their respective ministers for a lunch comprising vegetarian sushi, turbot, artichokes and praline tart.
Macron congratulated Sunak for agreeing the Windsor Framework with the European Commission | Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images
Speaking on the Eurostar en route to Paris, Sunak told reporters this was the beginning of a “new chapter” in the Franco-British relationship.
“It’s been great to get to know Emmanuel over the last two months. There’s a shared desire to strengthen the relationship,” he said. “I really believe that the range of things that we can do together is quite significant.”
In a show of goodwill from the French, who pushed energetically for a hard line during Brexit talks, Macron said he wanted to “fix the consequences of Brexit” and opened the door to closer cooperation with the Brits in the future.
“It’s my wish and it’s in our interests to have closest possible alliance. It will depend on our commitment and willingness but I am sure we will do it,” he said alongside Sunak.
Tackling small boats
Under the terms of the new migration deal, Britain will pay €141 million to France in 2023-24, €191 million in 2024-25 and €209 million in 2025-26.
This money will come in installments and go toward funding a new detention center in France, a new Franco-British command centre, an extra 500 law enforcement officers on French beaches and better technology to patrol them, including more drones and surveillance aircraft.
The new detention center, located in the Dunkirk area, would be funded by the British and run by the French and help compensate for the lack of space in other detention centers in northern France, according to one of Macron’s aides.
According to U.K. and French officials, France is expected to contribute significantly more funding — up to five times the amount the British are contributing — toward the plan although the Elysée has refused to give exact figures.
A new, permanent French mobile policing unit will join the efforts to tackle small boats. This work will be overseen by a new zonal coordination center, where U.K. liaison officers will be permanently based working with French counterparts.
Sunak stressed U.K.-French cooperation on small boats since November has made a significant difference, and defended the decision to hand more British money to France to help patrol the French northern shores. Irregular migration, he stressed, is a “joint problem.”
Ukraine unity
Sunak and Macron also made a show of unity on the war in Ukraine, agreeing that their priority would be to continue to support the country in its war against Russian aggression.
The French president said the “ambition short-term is to help Ukraine to resist and to build counter-offensives.”
“The priority is military,” he said. “We want a lasting peace, when Ukraine wants it and in the conditions that it wants and our will is to put it in position to do so.”
The West’s top priority should remain helping Ukrainians achieve “a decisive battlefield advantage” that later allows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to sit down at the negotiating table with Russian President Vladimir Putin from a stronger position, Sunak said en route to the summit.
“That should be everyone’s focus,” he added. “Of course, this will end as all conflicts do, at the negotiating table. But that’s a decision for Ukraine to make. And what we need to do is put them in the best possible place to have those talks at an appropriate moment that makes sense for them.”
The two leaders also announced they would start joint training operations of Ukrainian marines.
As Russia’s war in Ukraine puts a heavy strain on EU arms, there’s infighting in Brussels over how best to reload.
The latest skirmish is focused around a procurement fund intended to ramp up production of arms in Europe.
POLITICO has learned that key committees in the European Parliament — namely, the committees for industry, the internal market, and the subcommittee on security and defense — have clashed over the fund, formally known as European Defense Industry Reinforcement Through Common Procurement Act (EDIRPA). It holds €500 million for now, with the possibility to grow.
A French-led group in the Parliament is vying to keep the joint defense purchase pot within the borders of the European Union — which opponents are deriding as a power grab for France.
Currently, a compromise text seen by POLITICO leaves the door open to spending outside the EU. It says non-EU companies may be involved “provided that this does not contravene … the security and defense interests of the union and its member states.”
A faction across therelevant committees — consisting mainly of Polish, Estonian, Portuguese, German and Luxembourgish parliamentarians — has also amended the text to include “associated third countries.” They want to keep open the option to tap non-EU countries, like South Korea or the United States, to fill any gaps in weapon production.
In light of grinding ground battles on Ukrainian territory, concerns have been growing over the EU’s capacity to ramp up production of ammunition and weapons.
Yet French MEPs who dominate the Renew Europe group have been pushing back, seeking to make the fund a European-only affair.
Nathalie Loiseau, chair of the parliamentary defense subcommittee, denied that the push to limit funding to European countries would benefit only France. “France is not the only country producing weapons in Europe,” the Renew MEP told POLITICO, pointing also to Germany, Italy and Poland.
Loiseau said the entire remit of EDIRPA is intended to strengthen European industrial policy. “We need our industries to be able to produce [arms] more quickly, and we need to find a way to encourage this, so we need a solid EDIRPA.”
Ivars Ījabs, a Latvian MEP in the Renew Europe group who is leading work on the file in the internal market committee, described how he and his colleagues are “aware of the immediate challenges to European defense forces.”
As one of the MEPs most opposed to the French position, he explained: “My French colleagues are very much in support of the European Commission’s original proposal, with an emphasis on strengthening the defense industrial base in the medium term.”
Loiseau added that while she is open to non-European companies producing the weapons, “they must be produced in Europe,” arguing that spending EU money on weapons produced outside the bloc would be illegal under EU treaties, risking collapse of the entire procurement program.
Striking a balance
The increasingly acrimonious row in Parliament over the defense plan hits on a question raised since Europe began discussing beefing up its defense capabilities: Who will be able to get their hands on the extra billions of euros the EU intends to invest?
Thierry Breton, the internal market commissioner who announced the plan last year and has been championing it, is also French. Unveiling the initiative, he said, “These investments, funded by the European taxpayers … should benefit first and foremost European industry wherever that is possible.”
French industry accounts for more than 25 percent of European military capabilities. But many other countries, from Italy to Sweden, also have strong defense sectors (and many key companies based there often have strong corporate ties with countries outside the EU, such as the U.K. and the U.S.).
German center-right MEP Andreas Schwab said a balance needs to be struck to get the process moving.
“This instrument needs to find a middle ground, a middle way: sufficiently flexible for foreign components, but also a boost to EU industry — and especially, a boost to make ministries of defense start working together on bigger joint procurement projects,” he told POLITICO.
Thierry Breton announced the procurement plan last year, arguing it should benefit first and foremost European industry | Pool photo by Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
All major players agree on one thing: The fund should be bigger.
While the Commission’s plan earmarked an initial €500 million, the draft European Parliament proposal by the internal market and defense committees increased that to €1.5 billion.
But even €1.5 billion is “peanuts” when it comes to military hardware, said Dragoş Tudorache, Renew’s lead on EDIRPA in the defense subcommittee.
Tudorache explained that Parliament could theoretically wrap it up within two to three weeks once there’s agreement among the three committees.
As to which of the two camps will win out: “Right now I would not call it either way,” the MEP said.
A vote of the full Parliament — possibly in June — may be the most likely outcome.
EDIRPA is separate to the European Peace Facility, an off-budget intergovernmental EU fund that is now being used to backfill member countries’ supplies once they’ve sent arms to Ukraine. This mechanism is at the center of current plans to provide ammunition quickly to Ukraine, as first reported by POLITICO.
In contrast, EDIRPA is a medium-term project, originally meant to be for 2022 to 2024, to carry forward the joint procurement of arms and ammunition.
Based on EDIRPA, the Commission is meant to present an even larger program for joint procurement, called the European defence investment programme, which was originally expected for last year but is now tapped to arrive later this year.
Diplomats point out that is unclear where the Commission could find the money for a more ambitious joint procurement program.
Nearly six months on from the subsea gas pipeline explosions, which sent geopolitical shockwaves around the world in September, there is still no conclusive answer to the question of who blew up Nord Stream.
Some were quick to place the blame squarely at Russia’s door — citing its record of hybrid warfare and a possible motive of intimidation, in the midst of a bitter economic war with Europe over gas supply.
But half a year has passed without any firm evidence for this — or any other explanation — being produced by the ongoing investigations of authorities in three European countries.
Since the day of the attack, four states — Russia, the U.S., Ukraine and the U.K. — have been publicly blamed for the explosions, with varying degrees of evidence.
Still, some things are known for sure.
As was widely assumed within hours of the blast, the explosions were an act of deliberate sabotage. One of the three investigations, led by Sweden’s Prosecution Authority, confirmed in November that residues of explosives and several “foreign objects” were found at the “crime scene” on the seabed, around 100 meters below the surface of the Baltic Sea, close to the Danish Island of Bornholm.
Now two new media reports — one from the New York Times, the other a joint investigation by German public broadcasters ARD and SWR, plus newspaper Die Zeit — raised the possibility that a pro-Ukrainian group — though not necessarily state-backed — may have been responsible. On Wednesday, the German Prosecutor’s Office confirmed it had searched a ship in January suspected of transporting explosives used in the sabotage, but was still investigating the seized objects, the identities of the perpetrators and their possible motives.
In the information vacuum since September, various theories have surfaced as to the culprit and their motive:
Theory 1: Putin, the energy bully
In the days immediately after the attack, the working assumption of many analysts in the West was that this was a brazen act of intimidation on the part of Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, spelt out the hypothesis via his Twitter feed on September 27 — the day after the explosions were first detected. He branded the incident “nothing more [than] a terrorist attack planned by Russia and act of aggression towards the EU” linked to Moscow’s determination to provoke “pre-winter panic” over gas supplies to Europe.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki also hinted at Russian involvement. Russia denied responsibility.
The Nord Stream pipes are part-owned by Russia’s Gazprom. The company had by the time of the explosions announced an “indefinite” shutdown of the Nord Stream 1 pipes, citing technical issues which the EU branded “fallacious pretences.” The new Nord Stream 2 pipes, meanwhile, had never been brought into the service. Within days of Gazprom announcing the shutdown in early September, Putin issued a veiled threat that Europe would “freeze” if it stuck to its plan of energy sanctions against Russia.
But why blow up the pipeline, if gas blackmail via shutdowns had already proved effective? Why end the possibility of gas ever flowing again?
Simone Tagliapietra, energy specialist and senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank, said it was possible that — if it was Russia — there may have been internal divisions about any such decision. “At that point, when Putin had basically decided to stop supplying [gas to] Germany, many in Russia may have been against that. This was a source of revenues.” It is possible, Tagliapietra said, that “hardliners” took the decision to end the debate by ending the pipelines.
Blowing up Nord Stream, in this reading of the situation, was a final declaration of Russia’s willingness to cut off Europe’s gas supply indefinitely, while also demonstrating its hybrid warfare capabilities. In October, Putin said that the attack had shown that “any critical infrastructure in transport, energy or communication infrastructure is under threat — regardless of what part of the world it is located” — words viewed by many in the West as a veiled threat of more to come.
Theory 2: The Brits did it
From the beginning, Russian leaders have insinuated that either Ukraine or its Western allies were behind the attack. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said two days after the explosions that accusations of Russian culpability were “quite predictable and predictably stupid.” He added that Moscow had no interest in blowing up Nord Stream. “We have lost a route for gas supplies to Europe.”
Then a month on from the blasts, the Russian defense ministry made the very specific allegation that “representatives of the U.K. Navy participated in planning, supporting and executing” the attack. No evidence was given. The same supposed British specialists were also involved in helping Ukraine coordinate a drone attack on Sevastopol in Crimea, Moscow said.
The U.K.’s Ministry of Defence said the “invented” allegations were intended to distract attention from Russia’s recent defeats on the battlefield. In any case, Moscow soon changed its tune.
Theory 3: U.S. black ops
In February, with formal investigations in Germany, Sweden and Denmark still yet to report, an article by the U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh triggered a new wave of speculation. Hersh’s allegation: U.S. forces blew up Nord Stream on direct orders from Joe Biden.
The account — based on a single source said to have “direct knowledge of the operational planning” — alleged that an “obscure deep-diving group in Panama City” was secretly assigned to lay remotely-detonated mines on the pipelines. It suggested Biden’s rationale was to sever once and for all Russia’s gas link to Germany, ensuring that no amount of Kremlin blackmail could deter Berlin from steadfastly supporting Ukraine.
Hersh’s article also drew on Biden’s public remarks when, in February 2022, shortly before Russia’s full-scale invasion, he told reporters that should Russia invade “there will be no longer Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”
The White House described Hersh’s story as “utterly false and complete fiction.” The article certainly included some dubious claims, not least that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has “cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War.” Stoltenberg, born in 1959, was 16 years old when the war ended.
Russian leaders, however, seized on the report, citing it as evidence at the U.N. Security Council later in February and calling for an U.N.-led inquiry into the attacks, prompting Germany, Denmark and Sweden to issue a joint statement saying their investigations were ongoing.
Theory 4: The mystery boatmen
The latest clues — following reports on Tuesday from the New York Times and German media — center on a boat, six people with forged passports and the tiny Danish island of Christiansø.
According to these reports, a boat that set sail from the German port of Rostock, later stopping at Christiansø, is at the center of the Nord Stream investigations.
Germany’s federal prosecutor confirmed on Wednesday that a ship suspected of transporting explosives had been searched in January — and some of the 100 or so residents of tiny Christiansø told Denmark’s TV2 that police had visited the island and made inquiries. Residents were invited to come forward with information via a post on the island’s Facebook page.
Both the New York Times and the German media reports suggested that intelligence is pointing to a link to a pro-Ukrainian group, although there is no evidence that any orders came from the Ukrainian government and the identities of the alleged perpetrators are also still unknown.
Podolyak, Zelenskyy’s adviser, tweeted he was enjoying “collecting amusing conspiracy theories” about what happened to Nord Stream, but that Ukraine had “nothing to do” with it and had “no information about pro-Ukraine sabotage groups.”
Meanwhile, Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius warned against “jumping to conclusions” about the latest reports, adding that it was possible that there may have been a “false flag” operation to blame Ukraine.
The Danish Security and Intelligence Service said only that their investigation was ongoing, while a spokesperson for Sweden’s Prosecution Authority said information would be shared when available — but there was “no timeline” for when the inquiries would be completed.
BRUSSELS — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will travel to Washington next week, with China’s potential supply of weapons to Russia expected to be high on the agenda of a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden.
Her trip next Friday, confirmed by the White House, comes as EU officials are taking a wait-and-see approach to Washington’s claim that Beijing is considering providing Moscow with weapons. In a White House statement, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden will discuss “our work together to address the challenges posed by the People’s Republic of China” with von der Leyen.
U.S. officials are reportedly seeking to call on close allies to impose unprecedented sanctions on China, if Beijing provides military support to Russia for its war against Ukraine.
On Thursday, top Brussels-based diplomats from Ukraine, the U.S., Canada, Poland, the Baltic states, Japan and South Korea gathered for a lunch meeting. A spokesman for the Polish permanent representation to the EU, which organized the lunch, refused to disclose details of the discussion but said that the meeting was aimed at showing support for Ukraine.
A senior diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said at least one representative at the meeting said the EU should not act without proof of Chinese delivery of weapons to Russia. “Clearly a red line is crossed” if there is such proof, the diplomat added.
Another EU official, who was not at the gathering, said that the U.S. has fallen short of presenting evidence of China planning to provide weapons.
“There is a lot of talk out there … that China may be beginning to consider to deliver lethal weapons ammunition. We have not seen on our side, any concrete evidence of that so far,” the official said. “And I think if you look at the messaging from our U.S. friends, you’re seeing even slightly contradictory messaging at times, Biden was much softer … than others have been.”
In remarks aired on ABC News on Friday, Biden said: “I don’t anticipate — we haven’t seen it yet — but I don’t anticipate a major initiative on the part of China providing weaponry to Russia.”
That came after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Chinese firms were already providing “non-lethal support” to Russia, with new information suggesting that Beijing could provide “lethal support.”
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said in a press briefing Thursday that “there are tools available to not only the United States but to our allies and partners,” should China make moves to send weapons to Russia.
China’s Foreign Ministry has criticized Washington for “slandering” the country and questioning the U.S. sale of weapons to Taiwan while also supplying military support to Ukraine.
In Europe, officials have stepped up warnings targeted at Beijing. Addressing China in front of German lawmakers, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Thursday: “Do not supply weapons to the aggressor Russia.”
Earlier in the day, Dutch Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra said helping Moscow militarily “will have consequences if countries crossed that line.”
“What I will convey to each of the colleagues, including my Chinese colleagues here, is that the truth here is not somewhere in the middle. There is only one country responsible and that is Russia,” Hoekstra added.
As well as China, talks on the Inflation Reduction Act and broader security issues are expected to be discussed during von der Leyen’s White House visit.
Europe and the U.S. have been at odds for months over Washington’s landmark green subsidies plan, which Brussels fears will drain the continent of investment and green technology.
Before Washington, von der Leyen will travel to Canada to meet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Von der Leyen and Trudeau are expected to discuss the supply of raw materials, as the European Commission prepares to unveil its Critical Raw Materials Act this month. Another hot potato is trade, since the EU-Canada trade deal has still to be ratified by a number of EU countries, although significantly Germany gave it the green light in December.
At least 43 migrants drowned on Sunday after the fishing boat on which they were traveling sank off the coast of the Italian region of Calabria.
According to local authorities, some 250 migrants were crammed aboard the ship, which broke in two about 20 kilometers from the city of Crotone. Over 100 passengers have been rescued, but at least 70 of the people who were aboard the ship remain missing.
Over the course of the morning, bodies, including those of children and at least one newborn baby, have washed ashore in the resort town of Steccato di Cutro, according to local reports.
Although the ship’s port of origin was in Turkey, authorities say the majority of the migrants that have been rescued are from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said the disaster was “a huge tragedy that demonstrates how necessary it is to oppose the chains of irregular migration,” adding that more needed to be done to clamp down on “unscrupulous smugglers” who, “in order to get rich, organize improvised trips with inadequate boats and in prohibitive conditions.”
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her “deep sorrow” for the shipwreck and pledged to stop irregular sea migration in order to prevent more tragedies. “The government is committed to preventing [migrant] departures, and with them the unfolding of these tragedies,” she said in a statement.
“It is inhumane to trade the lives of men, women and children for the price of the ‘ticket’ they have paid with the false prospect of a safe journey,” Meloni said.
Calabrian President Roberto Occhiuto slammed EU authorities for their inaction in addressing the migration crisis and asked “what has the European Union been doing all these years?”
“Where is Europe when it comes to guaranteeing security and legality?” he asked, adding that regions like his were left on their own to “manage emergencies and mourn the dead.”
Opposition parties said the tragedy indicated the flaws in Italy’s migration policy. “Condemning only the smugglers, as the center-right is doing now, is hypocrisy,″ said Laura Ferrara, a European Parliament lawmaker from the 5-Star Movement. “The truth is that the EU today does not offer effective alternatives for those who are forced abandon their country of origin; there are no real alternatives to smugglers and traffickers,″ Ferrara said in a statement.
According to the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project, at least 2,366 migrants lost their lives attempting to cross the Mediterranean last year; at least 124 have been reporting missing in its waters since the beginning of this year.
French President Emmanuel Macron called on Monday for his country to build “a new, balanced relationship” with Africa, as the former colonial power seeks to reduce its military presence on the continent.
“The objective of this new era is to deploy our security presence in a partnership-based approach,” Macron said in a speech in Paris, ahead of a tour that will take him to Gabon, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Congo later this week.
In the future, French military bases on the continent will be “co-administered” with local personnel, the French president said, while there will be a “visible decrease” in the number of French troops stationed in Africa over the next few months.
The news comes as France has faced increasing opposition from local governments over its continued military presence in several of its former colonies, and was forced to withdraw hundreds of troops from Mali, the Central African Republic and Burkina Faso over the past year. Around 5,000 French soldiers remain stationed on various bases throughout the continent.
But Paris’ waning influence — particularly in the Sahel region — has also allowed Russia to expand its reach in Africa, including in the digital sphere through the use of disinformation campaigns, as well as on the ground with mercenaries from the Wagner group, who in some cases have replaced French soldiers.
The French president said his country would steer away from “anachronistic” power struggles in Africa, saying African countries should be considered as “partners,” both militarily and economically.
“Africa isn’t [anyone’s] backyard, even less so a continent where Europeans and French should dictate its framework for development,” Macron said.
One year of war in Ukraine has left deep scars — including on the country’s natural landscape.
The conflict has ruined vast swaths of farmland, burned down forests and destroyed national parks. Damage to industrial facilities has caused heavy air, water and soil pollution, exposing residents to toxic chemicals and contaminated water. Regular shelling around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, means the risk of a nuclear accident still looms large.
The total number of cases of environmental damage tops 2,300, Ukraine’s environment minister, Ruslan Strilets, told POLITICO in an emailed statement. His ministry estimates the total cost at $51.45 billion (€48.33 billion).
Of those documented cases, 1,078 have already been handed over to law enforcement agencies, according to Strilets, as part of an effort to hold Moscow accountable in court for environmental damage.
A number of NGOs have also stepped in to document the environmental impacts of the conflict, with the aim of providing data to international organizations like the United Nations Environment Program to help them prioritize inspections or pinpoint areas at higher risk of pollution.
Among them is PAX, a peace organization based in the Netherlands, which is working with the Center for Information Resilience (CIR) to record and independently verify incidents of environmental damage in Ukraine. So far, it has verified 242 such cases.
Left: Hostomel, Ukraine, after a Russian assault. Right: Port of Mykolaiv after a Russian strike | Imagery courtesy of Planet Labs PBC
“We mainly rely on what’s being documented, and what we can see,” said Wim Zwijnenburg, a humanitarian disarmament project leader with PAX. Information comes from social media, public media accounts and satellite imagery, and is then independently verified.
“That also means that if there’s no one there to record it … we’re not seeing it,” he said. “It’s such a big country, so there’s fighting in so many locations, and undoubtedly, we are missing things.”
After the conflict is over, the data could also help identify “what is needed in terms of cleanup, remediation and restoration of affected areas,” Zwijnenburg said.
Rebuilding green
While some conservation projects — such as rewilding of the Danube delta — have continued despite the war, most environmental protection work has halted.
“It is very difficult to talk about saving other species if the people who are supposed to do it are in danger,” said Oksana Omelchuk, environmental expert with the Ukrainian NGO EcoAction.
That’s unlikely to change in the near future, she added, pointing out that the environment is littered with mines.
Before and after flooding in the Kyiv area, Ukraine | Imagery courtesy of Planet Labs PBC
Agricultural land is particularly affected, blocking farmers from using fields and contaminating the soil, according to Zwijnenburg. That “might have an impact on food security” in the long run, he said.
When it comes to de-mining efforts, residential areas will receive higher priority, meaning it could take a long time to make natural areas safe again.
The delay will “[hinder] the implementation of any projects for the restoration and conservation of species,” according to Omelchuk.
And, of course, fully restoring Ukraine’s nature won’t be possible until “Russian troops leave the territory” she said.
Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol before and after a Russian attack |Imagery courtesy of Planet Labs PBC
Meanwhile, Kyiv is banking that the legal case it is building against Moscow will become a potential source of financing for rebuilding the country and bringing its scarred landscape and ecosystems back to health.
It is also tapping into EU coffers.In a move intended to help the country restore its environment following Russia’s invasion, Ukraine in June became the first non-EU country to join the LIFE program, the EU’s funding instrument for environment and climate.
Earlier this month, Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius announced a €7 million scheme — dubbed the Phoenix Initiative — to help Ukrainian cities rebuild greener and to connect Ukrainian cities with EU counterparts that can share expertise on achieving climate neutrality.
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Louise Guillot, Antonia Zimmermann and Giovanna Coi
KANKAANPÄÄ, Finland — In October, three Russian citizens arrived in the border town of Imatra and filed the paperwork to buy a rambling former old people’s home outside the small town of Kankaanpää, a five-hour drive away in Finland’s southwestern reaches.
The applicants ticked a box saying the property would be used for “leisure or recreational purposes” and all gave the same contact email and street address: a nondescript suburban apartment block in Russia’s second city, St. Petersburg.
The story didn’t fly.
Two months later, the Finnish defense ministry announced it had blocked the purchase, citing national security concerns to justify the move — the first time such reasoning had been used during the war on Ukraine.
The authorities’ problem with the transaction was a simple one: the building was a stone’s throw from the Niinisalo Garrison, an army training center for troops assigned to national defense and overseas operations. In May last year, the joint Finnish and NATO training exercise Arrow 22 — testing the readiness of armored brigades — was run out of the garrison.
On a recent weekday, green military transport vehicles could be seen entering and exiting the Niinisalo base. The old people’s home had a clear view of some of the roads in and out.
In the nearby town of Kankaanpää, locals were bemused by the Russians’ attempt to buy the old people’s home. Juhani Tuori, an estate agent, said he had heard about the planned deal and thought it odd. Tuori said he had been involved in trying to sell the old people’s home before, but had no role this time.
“I wondered why such a trade was made,” he said. “Especially given the state of the world.”
In a statement, the Finnish government said the transaction had been rejected because of the “special role” the city of Kankaanpää plays in securing Finland’s national defense.
“According to the Ministry of Defence, it is possible that the large property in the vicinity of the Niinisalo Garrison could be used in a manner that could hinder the organization of national defense and safeguarding of territorial integrity,” the statement said.
The Russian buyers did not respond to an emailed request for comment sent to the address they provided on their application to the defense ministry. They had 30 days from the date of the decision to appeal. As of February 9, they had not done so.
New suspicion
The Kankaanpää case shows how suspicions about Russian activity — official and civilian — have spiked in neighboring states as the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine looms.
For more than two decades after the end of the Cold War, Russians enjoyed increased freedom to buy assets across much of Europe, and Finland was no exception, despite a bloody recent history that saw Finland fight two wars with the Soviet Union in the middle of the last century.
Three Russian billionaires bought a leading Finnish ice hockey team and entered it in the Russian league. A Finnish energy company announced a joint plan with Russian state-run firm Rosatom to build a nuclear power plant in Finland.
Across the Nordic state, Russians also snapped up holiday homes in forests, on picturesque lake shores, and on remote Baltic Sea archipelagos in what were widely seen at the time as innocent investments in an economically stable neighboring state.
But now, with the Russian army’s aggression in Ukraine intensifying and the activities of its intelligence wing the GRU increasingly visible across Europe, Russian property purchases are being viewed with much greater skepticism.
Finland, which has a 1,340 km border with Russia, sees itself as especially vulnerable to covert Russian operations and has begun to take a much greater interest in which Russians are buying what assets: a Finn recently bought back the ice hockey team and the nuclear power plant plan was scrapped last year.
The defense ministry was granted powers in 2020 to block property sales to Russians and other citizens from outside the EU and the European Economic Area, but had never used them before the Kankaanpää case on national security grounds, a spokesman for the ministry said. The only other application rejection was because of an unpaid processing fee.
Experts say the officials are likely concerned the old people’s home could have been used as a base for special forces on covert missions, or more routinely as a place to run monitoring of comings and goings around the army base.
“This kind of place would not necessarily be part of some Russian masterplan, but could theoretically be there in case it was needed,” said Charly Salonius-Pasternak, a researcher at the Finnish Institute for International Affairs, a think tank.
In its ruling, the Finnish defense ministry said the Russian would-be buyers of the old people’s home had changed their story several times about what they intended to use the building for. Their explanations were “not credible,” the ministry said.
Visited on a recent weekday, the empty old people’s home, standing unheated in sub-zero temperatures, was clearly in need of some attention. The front door was yellow with rust. The driveway was covered in thick ice.
The old people’s home appeared to have around 100 bedrooms as well as extensive parking and other surrounding land. It could be accessed by vehicle from two sides with the edge of the Niinisalo Garrison area accessible from the property via wooded back roads as well as the main approach.
The tightening of Finnish property policy comes at a sensitive time for the Nordic country as it proceeds with applications to join NATO alongside nearby Sweden.
Vladimir Putin has threatened what he called a “military-technical response” to those bids, which has led to calls for heightened vigilance in both states.
Officials in Sweden, where there has been a flurry of arrests recently of suspected Russian spies, are likely watching closely to see what lessons can be learned from the Finnish rule change, experts say.
The state-run Swedish Defense Research Agency recently produced a report taking stock of Russian investments in Sweden.
In Finland, security experts have welcomed the country’s new property rules as part of a reckoning with Russian investment in the country, which some suggest was overdue.
“This is a problem which has long been recognized and now there are tools to at least fix some of it,” said researcher Salonius-Pasternak.
“I woke at 5 o’clock,” the Estonian prime minister recalled recently. The phone was ringing. Her Lithuanian counterpart was on the line.
“Oh my God, it’s really happening,” came the ominous words, according to Kallas. Another call came in. This time it was the Latvian prime minister.
It was February 24, 2022. War had begun on the European continent.
The night before, Kallas had told her Cabinet members to keep their phones on overnight in anticipation of just this moment: Russia was blitzing Ukraine in an attempt to decapitate the government and seize the country. For those in Estonia and its Baltic neighbors, where memories of Soviet occupation linger, the first images of war tapped into a national terror.
“I went to bed hoping that I was not right,” Kallas said.
Across Europe, similar wakeup calls rolled in, as Russian tanks barrelled into Ukraine and missiles pierced the early morning sky. In recent weeks, POLITICO spoke with prime ministers, high-ranking EU and NATO officials, foreign ministers and diplomats — nearly 20 in total — to reflect on the war’s early days as it reaches its ruinous one-year mark on Friday. All described a similar foreboding that morning, a sense that the world had irrevocably changed.
Within a year, the Russian invasion would profoundly reshape Europe, upending traditional foreign policy presumptions, cleaving it from Russian energy and reawakening long-dormant arguments about extending the EU eastward.
But for those centrally involved in the war’s buildup, the events of February 24 are still seared in their memories.
In an interview with POLITICO, Charles Michel — head of the European Council, the EU body comprising all 27 national leaders — recalled how he received a call directly from Kyiv as the attacks began.
“I was woken up by Zelenskyy,” Michel recounted. It was around 3 a.m. The Ukrainian president told Michel: “The aggression had started and that it was a full-scale invasion.”
Michel hit the phones, speaking to prime ministers across the EU throughout the night.
Ursula von der Leyen and Josep Borrell speak to the press on February 24, 2022 | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
By 5 a.m., EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was in his office. Three hours later, he was standing next to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as the duo made the EU’s first major public statement about the dawning war. Von der Leyen then convened the 27 commissioners overseeing EU policy for an emergency meeting.
Elsewhere in Brussels, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg was on the phone with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who were six hours behind in Washington, D.C. He then raced over to NATO headquarters, where he urgently gathered the military alliance’s decision-making body.
The mood that morning, Stoltenberg recalled in a recent conversation with reporters, was “serious” but “measured and well-organized.”
In Ukraine, missiles had begun raining down in Kyiv, Odesa and Mariupol. Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to social media, confirming in a video that war had begun. He urged Ukrainians to stay calm.
These video updates would soon become a regular feature of Zelenskyy’s wartime leadership. But this first one was especially jarring — a message from a president whose life, whose country, was now at risk.
It would be one of the last times the Ukrainian president, dressed in a dove-gray suit jacket and crisp white shirt, appeared in civilian clothes.
Europe’s 21st-century Munich moment
February 24, 2022 is an indelible memory for those who lived through it. For many, however, it felt inevitable.
Five days before the invasion, Zelenskyy traveled to the Munich Security Conference, an annual powwow of defense and security experts frequented by senior politicians.
It was here that the Ukrainian leader made one final, desperate plea for more weapons and more sanctions, hitting out at Germany for promising helmets and chiding NATO countries for not doing enough.
“What are you waiting for?” he implored in the highly charged atmosphere in the Bayerischer Hof hotel. “We don’t need sanctions after bombardment happens, after we have no borders, no economy. Why would we need those sanctions then?”
The symbolism was rife — Munich, a city forever associated with appeasement following Neville Chamberlain’s ill-fated attempt to swap land for peace with Adolf Hitler in 1938, was now the setting for Zelenskyy’s last appeal to the West.
Zelenskyy, never missing a moment, seized the historical analogy.
Five days before the invasion, Zelenskyy traveled to the Munich Security Conference, where he made one final, desperate plea for more weapons and more sanctions | Pool photo by Ronald Wittek/Getty Images
“Has our world completely forgotten the mistakes of the 20th century?” he asked. “Where does appeasement policy usually lead to?”
But his calls for more arms were ignored, even as countries began ordering their citizens to evacuate and airlines began canceling flights in and out of the country.
A few days later, Zelenskyy’s warnings were coming true. On February 22, Vladimir Putin inched closer to war, recognizing the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine. It was a decisive moment for the Russian president, paving the way for his all-out assault less than 48 hours later.
The EU responded the next day — its first major action against Moscow’s activities in Ukraine since the escalation of tensions in 2021. Officials unveiled the first in what would be nine sanction packages against Russia (and counting).
In an equally significant move, a reluctant Germany finally pulled the plug on Nord Stream 2, the yet unopened gas pipeline linking Russia to northern Germany — the decision, made after months of pressure, presaged how the Russian invasion would soon upend the way Europeans powered their lives and heated their homes.
Summit showdown
As it happened, EU leaders were already scheduled to meet in Brussels on February 24, the day the invasion began. Charles Michel had summoned the leaders earlier that week to deal with the escalating crisis, and to sign off on the sanctions.
Throughout the afternoon, Brussels was abuzz — TV cameras from around the world had descended on the European quarter. Helicopters circled overhead.
European leaders gathered in Brussels following the invasion | Pool photo by Olivier Hoslet/AFP via Getty Images
Suddenly, the regular European Council meeting of EU leaders, oftena forum for technical document drafting as much as political decision-making, had become hugely consequential. With war unfolding, the world was looking at the EU to respond — and lead.
The meeting was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. As leaders were gathering, news came that Russia had seized the Chernobyl nuclear plant, Moldova had declared a state of emergency and thousands of people were pouring out of Ukraine. Later that night, Zelenskyy announced a general mobilization:every man between the ages of 18 and 60 was being asked to fight.
Many leaders were wearing facemasks, a reminder that another crisis, which now seemed to pale in comparison, was still ever-present.
Just before joining colleagues at the Europa building in Brussels, Emmanuel Macron phoned Putin — the French president’s latest effort to mediate with the Russian leader. Macron had visited Moscow on February 7 but left empty-handed after five hours of discussions. He later said he made the call at Zelenskyy’s request, to ask Putin to stop the war.
“It did not produce any results,” Macron said of the call. “The Russian president has chosen war.”
Arriving at the summit, Latvian Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš captured the gravity of the moment. “Europe is experiencing the biggest military invasion since the Second World War,” he said. “Our response has to be united.”
But inside the room, divisions were on full display. How far, leaders wondered, could Europe go in sanctioning Russia, given the potential economic blowback? Countries dug in along fault lines that would become familiar in the succeeding months.
The realities of war soon pierced the academic debates. Zelenskyy’s team had set up a video link as missile strikes encircled the capital city, wanting to get the president talking to his EU counterparts.
One person present in the room recalled the percolating anxiety as the video feed beamed through — the image out of focus, the camera shaky. Then the picture sharpened and Zelenskyy appeared, dressed in a khaki shirt and looking deathly pale. His surroundings were faceless, an unknown room somewhere in Kyiv.
“Everyone was silent, the atmosphere was completely tense,” said the official who requested anonymity to speak freely.
Zelenskyy, shaken and utterly focused, told leaders that they may not see him again — the Kremlin wanted him dead.
Black smoke rises from a military airport in Chuguyev near Kharkiv on February 24, 2022 | Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images
“If you, EU leaders and leaders of the free world, do not really help Ukraine today, tomorrow the war will also knock at your door,” he warned, invoking an argument he would return to again and again: that this wasn’t just Ukraine’s war — it was Europe’s war.
Within hours, EU leaders had signed off on their second package of pre-prepared sanctions hitting Russia. But a fractious debate had already begun about what should come next.
The Baltic nations and Poland wanted more — more penalties, more economic punishments. Others were holding back. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi aired their reluctance about expelling Russian banks from the global SWIFT payment system. It was needed to pay for Russian gas, after all.
How quickly that would change.
Sanctions were not the only pressing matter. There was a humanitarian crisis unfolding on Europe’s doorstep. The EU had to both get aid into a war zone and prepare for a mass exodus of people fleeing it.
Janez Lenarčič, the EU’s crisis management commissioner, landed in Paris on the day of the invasion, returning from Niger. Officials started making plans to get ambulances, generators and medicine into Ukraine — ultimately comprising 85,000 tons of aid.
“The most complex, biggest and longest-ever operation” of its kind for the EU, he said.
By that weekend, there was also a plan for the refugees escaping Russian bombs. At a rare Sunday meeting, ministers agreed to welcome and distribute the escaping Ukrainians — a feat that has long eluded the EU for other migrants. Days later, they would grant Ukrainians the instant right to live and work in the EU — another first in an extraordinary time. Decisions that normally took years were now flying through in hours.
Looming over everything were Ukraine’s repeated — and increasingly dire — entreaties for more weapons. Europe’s military investments had lapsed in recent decades, and World War II still cast a dark shadow over countries like Germany, where the idea of sending arms to a warzone still felt verboten.
There were also quiet doubts (not to mention intelligence assessments). Would Ukraine even have its own government next week? Why risk war with Russia if it was days away from toppling Kyiv?
“What we didn’t know at that point was that the Ukrainian resistance would be so successful,” a senior NATO diplomat told POLITICO on condition of anonymity. “We were thinking there would be a change of regime [in Kyiv], what do we do?”
That, too, was all about to change.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz addressed Germany on the night of Russia’s invasion | Pool photo by Hannibal Hanschke/Getty Images
By the weekend, Germany had sloughed off its reluctance, slowly warming to its role as a key military player. The EU, too, dipped its toe into historic waters that weekend, agreeing to help reimburse countries sending weapons to Ukraine — another startling first for a self-proclaimed peace project.
“I remember, saying, ‘OK, now we go for it,’” said Stefano Sannino, secretary-general of the EU’s diplomatic arm.
Ironically, the EU would refund countries using the so-called European Peace Facility — a little-known fund that was suddenly the EU’s main vehicle to support lethal arms going to a warzone.
Over at NATO, the alliance activated its defense plans and sent extra forces to the alliance’s eastern flank. The mission had two tracks, Stoltenberg recounted — “to support Ukraine, but also prevent escalation beyond Ukraine.”
Treading that fine line would become the defining balancing act over the coming year for the Western allies as they blew through one taboo after another.
Who knew what, when
As those dramatic, heady early days fade into history, Europeans are now grappling with what the war means — for their identity, for their sense of security and for the European Union that binds them together.
The invasion has rattled the core tenets underlying the European project, said Ivan Krastev, a prominent political scientist who has long studied Europe’s place in the world.
“For different reasons, many Europeans believed that this is a post-war Continent,” he said.
Post-World War II Europe was built on the assumption that open economic policies, trade between neighbors and mild military power would preserve peace.
“For the Europeans to accept the possibility of the war was basically to accept the limits of our own model,” Krastev argued.
The disbelief has bred self-reflection: Has the war permanently changed the EU? Will a generation that had confined memories of World War II and the Cold War to the past view the next conflict differently?
And, perhaps most acutely, did Europe miss the signs?
Ukrainian refugees gather and rest upon their arrival at the main railway station in Berlin | Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images
“The start of that war has changed our lives, that’s for sure,” said Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu. It wasn’t, however, unexpected, he argued. “We are very attentive to what happens in our region,” he said. “The signs were quite clear.”
Aurescu pointed back to April 2021 as the moment he knew: “It was quite clear that Russia was preparing an aggression against Ukraine.”
Not everyone in Europe shared that assessment, though — to the degree that U.S. officials became worried. They started a public and private campaign in 2021 to warn Europe of an imminent invasion as Russia massed its troops on the Ukrainian border.
In November 2021, von der Leyen made her first trip to the White House. She sat down with Joe Biden in the Oval Office, surrounded by a coterie of national security and intelligence officials. Biden had just received a briefing before the gathering on the Russia battalion buildup and wanted to sound the alarm.
“The president was very concerned,” said one European official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. “This was a time when no one in Europe was paying any attention, even the intelligence services.”
But others disputed the narrative that Europe was unprepared as America sounded the alarm.
“It’s a question of perspective. You can see the same information, but come to a different conclusion,” said one senior EU official involved in discussions in the runup to the war, while conceding that the U.S. and U.K. — both members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance — did have better information.
Even if those sounding the alarm proved right, said Pierre Vimont, a former secretary-general of the EU’s diplomatic wing and Macron’s Russia envoy until the war broke out, it was hard to know in advance what, exactly, to plan for.
“What type of military operation would it be?” he recalled people debating. A limited operation in the east? A full occupation? A surgical strike on Kyiv?
Here’s where most landed: Russia’s onslaught was horrifying — its brutality staggering. But the signs had been there. Something was going to happen.
“We knew that the invasion is going to happen, and we had shared intelligence,” Stoltenberg stressed. “Of course, until the planes are flying and the battle tanks are rolling, and the soldiers are marching, you can always change your plans. But the more we approached the 24th of February last year, the more obvious it was.”
Then on the day, he recounted, it was a matter of dutifully enacting the plan: “We were prepared, we knew exactly what to do.”
“You may be shocked by this invasion,” he added, “but you cannot be surprised.”
Clea Caulcutt and Cristina Gallardo contributed reporting.
In the packed meeting rooms and hallways of Munich’s Hotel Bayerischer Hof last weekend, back-slapping allies pushed an agenda with the kind of forward-looking determination NATO had long sought to portray but just as often struggled to achieve. They pledged more aid for Ukraine. They revamped plans for their own collective defense.
Two days later in Moscow, Vladimir Putin stood alone, rigidly ticking through another speech full of resentment and lonely nationalism, pausing only to allow his audience of grim-faced government functionaries to struggle to their feet in a series of mandatory ovations in a cold, cavernous hall.
With the war in Ukraine now one year old, and no clear path to peace at hand, a newly unified NATO is on the verge of making a series of seismic decisions beginning this summer to revolutionize how it defends itself while forcing slower members of the alliance into action.
The decisions in front of NATO will place the alliance — which protects 1 billion people — on a path to one the most sweeping transformations in its 74-year history. Plans set to be solidified at a summit in Lithuania this summer promise to revamp everything from allies’ annual budgets to new troop deployments to integrating defense industries across Europe.
The goal: Build an alliance that Putin wouldn’t dare directly challenge.
Yet the biggest obstacle could be the alliance itself, a lumbering collection of squabbling nations with parochial interests and a bureaucracy that has often promised way more than it has delivered. Now it has to seize the momentum of the past year to cut through red tape and crank up peacetime procurement strategies to meet an unpredictable, and likely increasingly belligerent Russia.
It’s “a massive undertaking,” said Benedetta Berti, head of policy planning at the NATO secretary-general’s office. The group has spent “decades of focusing our attention elsewhere,” she said. Terrorism, immigration — all took priority over Russia.
“It’s really a quite significant historic shift for the alliance,” she said.
For now, individual nations are making the right noises. But the proof will come later this year when they’re asked to open up their wallets, and defense firms are approached with plans to partner with rivals.
To hear alliance leaders and heads of state tell it, they’re ready to do it.
“Ukraine has to win this,” Adm. Rob Bauer, the head of NATO’s military committee, said on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. “We cannot allow Russia to win, and for a good reason — because the ambitions of Russia are much larger than Ukraine.”
All eyes on Vilnius
The big change will come In July, when NATO allies gather in Vilnius, Lithuania, for their big annual summit.
Gen. Chris Cavoli will reveal how personnel across the alliance will be called to help on short notice | Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images
NATO’s top military leader will lay out a new plan for how the alliance will put more troops and equipment along the eastern front. And Gen. Chris Cavoli, supreme allied commander for Europe, will also reveal how personnel across the alliance will be called to help on short notice.
The changes will amount to a “reengineering” of how Europe is defended, one senior NATO official said.
The plans will be based on geographic regions, with NATO asking countries to take responsibility for different security areas, from space to ground and maritime forces.
“Allies will know even more clearly what their jobs will be in the defense of Europe,” the official said.
NATO leaders have also pledged to reinforce the alliance’s eastern defenses and make 300,000 troops ready to rush to help allies on short notice, should the need arise.Under the current NATO Response Force, the alliance can make available 40,000 troops in less than 15 days. Under the new force model, 100,000 troops could be activated in up to 10 days, with a further 200,000 ready to go in up to 30 days.
But a good plan can only get allies so far.
NATO’s aspirations represent a departure from the alliance’s previous focus on short-term crisis management. Essentially, the alliance is “going in the other direction and focusing more on collective security and deterrence and defense,” said a second NATO official, who like the first, requested anonymity to discuss ongoing planning.
Chief among NATO’s challenges: Getting everyone’s armed forces to cooperate. Countries such as Germany, which has underfunded its military modernization programs for years, will likely struggle to get up to speed. And Sweden and Finland — on the cusp of joining NATO — are working to integrate their forces into the alliance.
Others simply have to expand their ranks for NATO to meet its stated quotas.
“NATO needs the ability to add speed, put large formations in the field — much larger than they used to,” said Bastian Giegerich, director of defense and military analysis and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
East vs. West
An east-west ideological fissure is also simmering within NATO.
Countries on the alliance’s eastern front have long been frustrated, at times publicly, with the slower pace of change many in Western Europe and the United States are advocating — even after Russia’s invasion.
Joe Biden traveled to Warsaw for a major speech last week that helped alleviate some of the tensions and perceived slights | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
“We started to change and for western partners, it’s been kind of a delay,” Polish Armed Forces Gen. Rajmund Andrzejczak said during a visit to Washington this month.
Those concerns on the eastern front are being heard, tentatively.
Last summer, NATO branded Russia as its most direct threat — a significant shift from post-Cold War efforts to build a partnership with Moscow. U.S. President Joe Biden has also conducted his own charm offensive, traveling to Warsaw for a major speech last week that helped alleviate some of the tensions and perceived slights.
Still, NATO’s eastern front, which is within striking distance of Russia, is imploring its western neighbors to move faster to help fill in the gaps along the alliance’s edges and to buttress reinforcement plans.
It is important to “fix the slots — which countries are going to deliver which units,” said Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu, adding that he hopes the U.S. “will take a significant part.”
Officials and experts agree that these changes are needed for the long haul.
“If Ukraine manages to win, then Ukraine and Europe and NATO are going to have a very disgruntled Russia on its doorstep, rearming, mobilizing, ready to go again,” said Sean Monaghan, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“If Ukraine loses and Russia wins,” he noted, the West would have “an emboldened Russia on our doorstep — so either way, NATO has a big Russia problem.”
Wakeup call from Russia
The rush across the Continent to rearm as weapons and equipment flows from long-dormant stockpiles into Ukraine has been as sudden as the invasion itself.
After years of flat defense budgets and Soviet-era equipment lingering in the motor pools across the eastern front, calls for more money and more Western equipment threaten to overwhelm defense firms without the capacity to fill those orders in the near term. That could create a readiness crisis in ammunition, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and anti-armor weapons.
A damaged Russian tank near Kyiv on February 14, 2023 | Sergei Dolzhenko/EPA-EFE
NATO actually recognized this problem a decade ago but lacked the ability to do much about it. The first attempt to nudge member states into shaking off the post-Cold War doldrums started slowly in the years before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.
After Moscow took Crimea and parts of the Donbas in 2014, the alliance signed the “Wales pledge” to spend 2 percent of economic output on defense by 2024.
The vast majority of countries politely ignored the vow, giving then-President Donald Trump a major talking point as he demanded Europe step up and stop relying on Washington to provide a security umbrella.
But nothing focuses attention like danger, and the sight of Russian tanks rumbling toward Kyiv as Putin ranted about Western depravity and Russian destiny jolted Europe into action. One year on, the bills from those early promises to do more are coming due.
“We are in this for the long haul” in Ukraine, said Bauer, the head of NATO’s Military Committee, a body comprising allies’ uniformed defense chiefs. But sustaining the pipeline funneling weapons and ammunition to Ukraine will take not only the will of individual governments but also a deep collaboration between the defense industries in Europe and North America. Those commitments are still a work in progress.
Part of that effort, Bauer said, is working to get countries to collaborate on building equipment that partners can use. It’s a job he thinks the European Union countries are well-suited to lead.
That’s a touchy subject for the EU, a self-proclaimed peace project that by definition can’t use its budget to buy weapons. But it can serve as a convener. And it agreed to do just that last week, pledging with NATO and Ukraine to jointly establish a more effective arms procurement system for Kyiv.
Talk, of course, is one thing. Traditionally NATO and the EU have been great at promising change, and forming committees and working groups to make that change, only to watch it get bogged down in domestic politics and big alliance in-fighting. And many countries have long fretted about the EU encroaching on NATO’s military turf.
But this time, there is a sense that things have to move, that western countries can’t let Putin win his big bet — that history would repeat itself, and that Europe and the U.S. would be frozen by an inability to agree.
“People need to be aware that this is a long fight. They also need to be brutally aware that this is a war,” the second NATO official said. “This is not a crisis. This is not some small incident somewhere that can be managed. This is an all-out war. And it’s treated that way now by politicians all across Europe and across the alliance, and that’s absolutely appropriate.”
Paul McLeary and Lili Bayer also contributed reporting from Munich.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cautiously welcomed Beijing’s efforts toward ending the war in Ukraine and said he would like to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss China’s proposals.
Speaking at a press conference in Kyiv Friday to mark the first anniversary of Moscow’s invasion, Zelenskyy said he was open to considering some aspects of the 12-point “position paper” published by the Chinese foreign ministry. Both NATO and the EU have criticized the initiative, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen saying that “China has taken sides” in the Ukraine conflict.
Beijing claims to have a neutral stance in the war but also has said it has a “no limits” relationship with Moscow and has refused to criticize President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Zelenskyy said a meeting with Xi could be “useful” to both countries and for global security. “As far as I know, China respects historical integrity,” he told reporters in Kyiv.
“I believe that the fact that China started talking about Ukraine is not bad,” Zelenskyy said, according to the Associated Press. “But the question is what follows the words. The question is in the steps and where they will lead to.”
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak called the Chinese proposals “unrealistic” in a tweet on Saturday.
Zelenskyy also warned Beijing against providing Russia with weapons, something of increasing concern to Western governments. China is considering providing drones and ammunition to help Moscow’s war efforts in Ukraine, a person familiar with the matter told POLITICO on Friday.
“I very much want to believe that China will not deliver weapons to Russia, and for me this is very important,” Zelenskyy said, according to Reuters.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday said the alliance is closely monitoring China’s activities, adding that Beijing sending lethal aid to Moscow would be a “very big mistake.”
French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday welcomed Beijing’s initiative on the conflict in Ukraine and said he will visit China in early April and seek Chinese help in ending the war. “The fact that China is engaging in peace efforts is a good thing,” Macron said, according to French media reports.
The French leader also asked Beijing “not to supply any arms to Russia.” And he sought Beijing’s aid to “exert pressure on Russia to ensure it never uses chemical or nuclear weapons and it stops this aggression prior to negotiations,” according to the reports.
Meanwhile, Beijing announced on Saturday that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko will visit China on a state visit from February 28 to March 2. The Belarusian foreign ministry confirmed the planned visit.
Lukashenko, a close ally of Putin, has backed Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and allowed its territory to be used in the Russian assault. Lukashenko said last week that his country was prepared to join Russia’s war against Ukraine, if attacked.
Zelenskyy also said that any proposal to end the war would be acceptable only if it led to Putin pulling his troops out of all occupied Ukrainian territory.
Beijing announced on Saturday that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, will travel to China on a state visit from February 28 to March 2.
The announcement of the trip comes a day after Beijing, looking to play a role in mediating a resolution to the Russian war on Ukraine, published a 12-point “position paper” aimed at ending the conflict.
“At the invitation of President Xi Jinping, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko will pay a state visit to China from February 28 to March 2,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
The Belarusian foreign ministry confirmed the planned visit, saying the Chinese and Belarusian foreign ministers discussed it in a telephone call on Friday.
Lukashenko has backed Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and allowed its territory to be used in the Russian assault. Lukashenko said last week that his country was prepared to join Russia’s war against Ukraine, if attacked. That prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to warn the Belarusian leader not to get directly involved in the war.
Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday said he will visit China in early April and seek Beijing’s help in ending the war in Ukraine. “The fact that China is engaging in peace efforts is a good thing,” Macron said, according to French media reports.
Ukraine’s Zelenskyy also said he would like to engage with Beijing following the proposals unveiled on Friday toward resolving the conflict. Zelenskyy said he was open to considering some aspects of the Chinese “position paper” and would welcome the chance to discuss the proposals with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
A meeting with Xi could be “useful” to both countries and for global security, Zelenskyy said.
French President Emmanuel Macron is wasting his time talking to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday.
“It’s a useless dialogue. In truth, Macron is wasting his time,” Zelenskyy said during an interview with several Italian newspapers.
“I have come to the conclusion that we are unable to change the Russian attitude,” Zelenskyy added. “It is up to them to choose whether to cooperate with the international community.”
Macron has been criticized by Zelenskyy in the past for his attempts to keep lines of communication open with Moscow since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
In remarks made over the weekend during the Munich Security Conference, Macron said that he had not spoken to Putin since last September, adding that “now [was] not the time for dialogue.”
But, a day later, Macron added that although he wished for the Kremlin to lose, the war would end not on the battlefield but with peace talks — and that France would “never” support “crushing Russia.”
In the same interview with Italian media, Zelenskyy also reacted ironically to the recent statements from former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who triggered an internal revolt among European conservatives last week after he said the Ukrainian president was responsible for the war.
Berlusconi, who has described himself as a close friend of Putin, was heard boasting about receiving bottles of vodka from Putin for his birthday in audio tapes leaked to the press.
“He likes vodka? If that’s the case, we have some of the finest quality in Ukraine — we can offer him some,” Zelenskyy said.
The Ukrainian president also commented on recent reports from the U.S. that China was ready to send weapons to Russia, saying he hoped Beijing would keep a “pragmatic approach,” to avoid a “Third World War.”
MUNICH — French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday called out Vladimir Putin for telling him last year that the paramilitary Wagner Group had nothing to do with Russia.
“A year ago I spoke to Putin and he assured me Russia had nothing to do with the Wagner Group,” he told an audience at the Munich Security Conference. “I accepted that,” he said.
The Wagner Group has since provided military services supporting Russia’s war effort. It means Moscow “formalized the fact that Wagner was an explicit, direct, diplomatic-military, neo-mafia medium of Russia around the world,” Macron said.
Macron’s speech comes as country leaders and security officials gathered for a three-day event in the Bavarian capital, a conference dominated by the West’s efforts to allign on how to support Kyiv in its conflict with Russia.
The French president said the time isn’t right for dialogue with Russia and called on Western states to “intensify” their backing of a Ukrainian counter-offensive. But he suggested that — when negotiations would end the war on terms acceptable to Kyiv — Europe and Russia should “create an imperfect balance” on the Continent.
“It’s time for a transition,” he said, suggesting Russia and its adversaries will need to agree on a new regional security architecture, calling it an “imperfect balance.”
But he emphasized the time isn’t right for negotiations, noting it’s “too early” to formulate such a Europe-Russia understanding.
MUNICH — The United States has determined that Russia is committing crimes against humanity in Ukraine, Vice President Kamala Harris announced Saturday, the latest salvo in the West’s effort to hold Moscow accountable for its wartime atrocities.
In a marquee address at the Munich Security Conference, Harris detailed that Russia is responsible for a “widespread and systematic attack” against Ukraine’s civilian population, citing evidence of execution-style killings, rape, torture and forceful deportations — sometimes perpetrated against children. As a result, Russia has not only committed war crimes, as the administration formally concluded in March, but also illegal acts against non-combatants.
“Their actions are an assault on our common values, an attack on our common humanity,” the vice president said, referencing images of bodies lying in the streets of Bucha and the sexual assault of a four-year-old girl by a Russian soldier. “Barbaric and inhumane.”
Harris then declared: “The United States has formally determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity.”
She added: “Let us all agree: on behalf of all the victims, both known and unknown: justice must be served.”
The declaration is among the most forceful yet from a Western power as allies grapple with how to punish Russians responsible for violations. And it escalates the judicial side of America’s support for Ukraine, which has long said Russia was guilty of these crimes and that Russian President Vladimir Putin was ultimately responsible.
Harris didn’t cite Putin by name, but the clear implication is that the invasion he launched nearly a year ago is why Ukrainian civilians are now victims of these international law violations.
While “crimes against humanity” are not officially codified in an international treaty, they are still adjudicated in the International Criminal Court and other global bodies. The Biden administration’s determination means the U.S. believes Russian actions have met a broader standard than war crimes but not as specific a violation as genocide.
“In contrast with genocide, crimes against humanity do not need to target a specific group,” according to the United Nations. “Instead, the victim of the attack can be any civilian population, regardless of its affiliation or identity. Another important distinction is that in the case of crimes against humanity, it is not necessary to prove that there is an overall specific intent.”
Some, however, would like the Biden administration to go further. Back in the United States, both of West Virginia’s senators, Democrat Joe Manchin and Republican Shelley Moore Capito, introduced a resolution to recognize Russia’s war on Ukraine as a genocide.
Others like Tom Malinowski, a former member of Congress and senior human rights official at the State Department, believe “these debates about what to call Russia’s atrocities are less important than providing Ukraine the means to stop them.”
Andriy Yermak, the chief of Ukraine’s presidential office, said his country wouldn’t feel safe until Russia’s leadership was punished | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
“But yes, there’s no question that Russia is committing crimes against humanity,” he continued, “and we’re right to say so.”
On Friday, shortly after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke via video to the gathering of officials and experts here, Andriy Yermak, the chief of Ukraine’s presidential office, said his country wouldn’t feel safe until Russia’s leadership was punished.
“The fastest and easiest way to build the security of Ukraine and the whole world is to create a special tribunal to try the Russian leadership for the crime of aggression. Europe and the entire civilized world understand why it is necessary,” he said at the opening of the “Ukraine is You” exhibit.
MUNICH — Cut through the haze of hoary proclamations emanating from the main stage of the Munich Security Conference about Western solidarity and common purpose this weekend, and one can’t help but notice more than a hint of foreboding just beneath the surface.
Even as Western leaders congratulate themselves for their generosity toward Ukraine, the country’s armed forces are running low on ammunition, equipment and even men. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who opened the conference from Kyiv on Friday, urged the free world to send more help — and fast. “We need speed,” he said.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris turned the heat up on Russia on another front, accusing the country of “crimes against humanity.” “Let us all agree. On behalf of all the victims, both known and unknown: justice must be served,” she said.
In other words, Russian leaders could be looking at Nuremberg 2.0. That’s bound to make a few people in Moscow nervous, especially those old enough to remember what happened to Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milošević and his entourage.
The outlook in Asia is no less fraught. Taiwan remains on edge, as the country tries to guess China’s next move. Here too, the news from Munich wasn’t reassuring.
“What is happening in Europe today could happen in Asia tomorrow,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi did nothing to contradict that narrative. “Let me assure the audience that Taiwan is part of Chinese territory,” Wang told the conference when asked about Beijing’s designs on the self-governed island. Taiwan “has never been a country and it will never be a country in the future.”
For some attendees, the vibe in the crowded Bayerischer Hof hotel where the gathering takes place carried echoes of 1938. That year, the Bavarian capital hosted a conference that resulted in the infamous Munich Agreement, in which European powers ceded the Sudetenland to Germany in a misguided effort they believed could preserve peace.
“We all know that there is a storm brewing outside, but here inside the Bayerischer Hof all seems normal,” wrote Andrew Michta, dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the Germany-based Marshall Center. “It all seems so routine, and yet it all changes suddenly when a Ukrainian parliamentarian pointedly tells the audience we are failing to act fast enough.”
The only people smiling at this year’s security conference are the defense contractors. Arms sales are booming by all accounts.
Even Germany, which in recent years perfected the art of explaining away its failure to meet its NATO defense spending commitment, promised to reverse course. Indeed, German officials appeared to be trying to outdo one another to prove just how hawkish they’ve become.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed to “permanently” meet NATO’s defense spending goal for individual members of two percent of GDP.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed to “permanently” meet NATO’s defense spending goal for individual members | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
Germany’s new defense minister, Boris Pistorius, a Social Democrat like Scholz, called for even more, saying that “it will not be possible to fulfill the tasks that lie ahead of us with barely two percent.”
Keep in mind that at the beginning of last year, leading Social Democrats were still calling on the U.S. to remove all of its nuclear warheads from German soil.
In other words, if even the Germans have woken up to the perils of the world’s current geopolitical state, this could well be the moment to really start worrying.
CORRECTION: Jens Stoltenberg’s reference to Asia has been updated.
MUNICH — China is trying to drive a fresh wedge between Europe and the United States as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine trudges past its one-year mark.
Such was the motif of China’s newly promoted foreign policy chief Wang Yi when he broke the news at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday that President Xi Jinping would soon present a “peace proposal” to resolve what Beijing calls a conflict — not a war — between Moscow and Kyiv. And he pointedly urged his European audience to get on board and shun the Americans.
In a major speech, Wang appealed specifically to the European leaders gathered in the room.
“We need to think calmly, especially our friends in Europe, about what efforts should be made to stop the warfare; what framework should there be to bring lasting peace to Europe; what role should Europe play to manifest its strategic autonomy,” said Wang, who will continue his Europe tour with a stop in Moscow.
In contrast, Wang launched a vociferous attack on “weak” Washington’s “near-hysterical” reaction to Chinese balloons over U.S. airspace, portraying the country as warmongering.
“Some forces might not want to see peace talks to materialize,” he said, widely interpreted as a reference to the U.S. “They don’t care about the life and death of Ukrainians, [nor] the harms on Europe. They might have strategic goals larger than Ukraine itself. This warfare must not continue.”
Yet at the conference, Europe showed no signs of distancing itself from the U.S. nor pulling back on military support for Ukraine. The once-hesitant German Chancellor Olaf Scholz urged Europe to give Ukraine even more modern tanks. And French President Emmanuel Macron shot down the idea of immediate peace talks with the Kremlin.
And, predictably, there was widespread skepticism that China’s idea of “peace” will match that of Europe.
“China has not been able to condemn the invasion,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a group of reporters. Beijing’s peace plan, he added, “is quite vague.” Peace, the NATO chief emphasized, is only possible if Russia respects Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Europe watches with caution
Wang’s overtures illustrate the delicate dance China has been trying to pull off since the war began.
Keen to ensure Russia is not weakened in the long run, Beijing has offered Vladimir Putin much-needed diplomatic support, while steering clear of any direct military assistance that would attract Western sanctions against its economic and trade relations with the world.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Wang while in Munich | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
“We will put forward China’s position on the political settlement on the Ukraine crisis, and stay firm on the side of peace and dialogue,” Wang said. “We do not add fuel to the fire, and we are against reaping benefit from this crisis.”
According to Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who met Wang earlier this week, Xi will make his “peace proposal” on the first anniversary of the war, which is Friday.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Wang while in Munich. He said he hoped to have a “frank” conversation with the Beijing envoy.
“We believe that compliance with the principle of territorial integrity is China’s fundamental interest in the international arena,” Kuleba told journalists in Munich. “And that commitment to the observance and protection of this principle is a driving force for China, greater than other arguments offered by Ukraine, the United States, or any other country.”
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell met Wang later on Saturday and called on him to “use [China’s] closeness to convince Russia to engage in real peace efforts. Borrell expressed hope that Wang’s visit to Moscow could be used to convince Russia to stop its brutal war,” according to an EU official familiar with the talks, adding the EU chief told Wang Russia conducted “gross violation of the letter and spirit of the U.N. Charter.”
Many in Munich were wary of the upcoming Chinese plan.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock welcomed China’s effort to use its influence to foster peace but told reporters she had “talked intensively” with Wang during a bilateral meeting on Friday about “what a just peace means: not rewarding the attacker, the aggressor, but standing up for international law and for those who have been attacked.”
“A just peace,” she added, “presupposes that the party that has violated territorial integrity — meaning Russia — withdraws its troops from the occupied country.”
One reason for Europe’s concerns is the Chinese peace plan could undermine an effort at the United Nations to rally support for a resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which will be on the U.N.’s General Assembly agenda next week, according to three European officials and diplomats.
Taiwan issue stokes up US-China tension
If China was keen to talk about peace in Ukraine, it’s more reluctant to do so in a case closer to home.
When Wolfgang Ischinger, the veteran German diplomat behind the conference, asked Wang if he could reassure the audience Beijing was not planning an imminent military escalation against Taiwan, the Chinese envoy was non-committal.
Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said “what is happening in Europe today could happen in east Asia tomorrow” | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
“Let me assure the audience that Taiwan is part of Chinese territory. It has never been a country and it will never be a country in the future,” Wang said.
The worry over Taiwan resonated in a speech from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who said “what is happening in Europe today could happen in Asia tomorrow.” Reminding the audience of the painful experience of relying on Russia’s energy supply, he said: “We should not make the same mistakes with China and other authoritarian regimes.”
But China’s most forceful attack was reserved for the U.S. Calling its decision to shoot down Chinese and other balloons “absurd” and “near-hysterical,” Wang said: “It does not show the U.S. is strong; on the contrary, it shows it is weak.
Wang also amplified the message in other bilateral meetings, including one with Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. “U.S. bias and ignorance against China has reached a ridiculous level,” he said. “The U.S. … has to stop this kind of absurd nonsense out of domestic political needs.”
It remains unclear if Wang will hold a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken while in Germany, as has been discussed.
Hans von der Burchard and Lili Bayer reported from Munich, and Stuart Lau reported from Brussels.
This article was updated to include details of the meeting between Wang and Borrell.
CORRECTION: Jens Stoltenberg’s reference to Asia has been updated.
Washington is trying to “demonize Russia” and “fuel the Ukrainian crisis” by accusing Moscow of crimes against humanity, Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov said on Sunday.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris announced Saturday that Washington has formally determined that Russia is committing crimes against humanity in Ukraine, in an address at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.
In a message on the social media network Telegram, Antonov said: “We consider such insinuations as an attempt, unprecedented in terms of its cynicism, to demonize Russia in the course of a hybrid war, unleashed against us. There is no doubt that the purpose of such attacks is to justify Washington’s own actions to fuel the Ukrainian crisis,” he said.
Harris had said Russia is responsible for a “widespread and systematic attack” against Ukraine’s civilian population, committing war crimes — as the administration formally concluded last March — and illegal acts against non-combatants. She cited evidence of execution-style killings, rape, torture and forceful deportations.
MUNICH — NATO’s eastern flank has found its voice — but Joe Biden’s visit is a reminder that Western capitals still have the weight.
After Russia bombed its way into Ukraine, the military alliance’s eastern members won praise for their prescient warnings (not to mention a few apologies). They garnered respect for quickly emptying their weapons stockpiles for Kyiv and boosting defense spending to new heights. Now, they’re driving the conversation on how to deal with Russia.
In short, eastern countries suddenly have the ear of traditional Western powers — and they are trying to move the needle.
“We draw the red line, then we waste the time, then we cross this red line,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said over the weekend at the Munich Security Conference, describing a now-familiar cycle of debates among Ukraine’s partners as eastern capitals push others to move faster.
The region’s sudden prominence will be on full display as U.S. President Joe Biden travels to Poland this week, where he will sit down with leaders of the so-called Bucharest Nine — Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
The choice is both symbolic and practical. Washington is keen to show its eastern partners it wants their input — and to remind Vladimir Putin of the consequences should the Kremlin leader spread his war into NATO territory.
Yet when it comes to allies’ most contentious decisions, like what arms to place where, the eastern leaders ultimately still have to defer to leaders like Biden — and his colleagues in Western powers like Germany. They are the ones holding the largest quantities of modern tanks, fighter jets and long-range missiles, after all.
“My job,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in Munich, is “to move the pendulum of imagination of my partners in western Europe.”
“Our region has risen in relevance,” added Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský in an interview. But Western countries are still “much stronger” on the economic and military front, he added. “They are still the backbone.”
They’re listening … now
When Latvian Defense Minister Ināra Mūrniece entered politics over a decade ago, she recalled the skepticism that greeted her and like-minded countries when they discussed Russia on the global stage.
“They didn’t understand us,” she said in an interview earlier this month. People saw the region as “escalating the picture,” she added.
Latvian Defense Minister Ināra Mūrniece | Gints Ivuskans/AFP via Getty Images
February 24, 2022, changed things. The images of Russia rolling tanks and troops into Ukraine shocked many Westerners — and started changing minds. The Russian atrocities that came shortly after in places like Bucha and Irpin were “another turning point,” Mūrniece said.
Now, the eastern flank plays a key role in defining the alliance’s narrative — and its understanding of Russia.
“Our voice is now louder and more heard,” said Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu.
The Bucharest Nine — an informal format that brings together the region for dialogue with the U.S. and occasionally other partners — is one of the vehicles regional governments are using to showcase their interests.
“It has become an authoritative voice in terms of assessment of the security situation, in terms of assessment of needs,” Aurescu said in an interview in Munich. NATO is listening to the group for a simple reason, he noted: “The security threats are coming from this part of our neighborhood.”
Power shifts … slowly
While the eastern flank has prodded its western partners to send once-unthinkable weapons to Ukraine, the power balance has not completely flipped. Far from it.
Washington officials retain the most sway in the Western alliance. Behind them, several western European capitals take the lead.
“Without the Germans things don’t move — without the Americans things don’t move for sure,” said one senior western European diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly.
And at this stage of the war, as Ukraine pushes for donations of the most modern weapons — fighter jets, advanced tanks, longer-range missile systems — it’s the alliance’s largest economies and populations that are in focus.
“It’s very easy for me to say that, ‘Of course, give fighter jets’ — I don’t have them,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told reporters earlier this month.
Asked if his country would supply Kyiv with F-16 fighter jets, Morawiecki conceded in Munich, “we have not too many of them.” | Omar Marques/Getty Images
“So it’s up to those countries to say who have,” she said. “If I would have, I would give — but I don’t.”
And even some eastern countries who have jets don’t want to move without their Western counterparts.
Asked if his country would supply Kyiv with F-16 fighter jets, Morawiecki conceded in Munich, “we have not too many of them.” He did say, however, that Poland could offer older jets — if the allies could pull together a coalition, that is.
Another challenge for advocates of a powerful eastern voice within NATO is that the eastern flank itself is diverse.
Priorities vary even among like-minded countries based on their geographies. And, notably, there are some Russia-friendly outliers.
Hungary, for example, does not provide any weapons assistance to Ukraine and continues to maintain a relationship with the Kremlin. In fact, Budapest has become so isolated in Western policy circles that no Hungarian government officials attended the Munich Security Conference.
“I think the biggest problem in Hungary is the rhetoric of leadership, which sometimes really crosses the red line,” said the Czech Republic’s Lipavský, who was cautious to add that Budapest does fulfill NATO obligations, participating in alliance defense efforts.
Just for now?
There are also questions about whether the east’s moment in the limelight is a permanent fixture or product of the moment. After all, China, not Russia, may be seizing western attention in the future.
“It’s obvious that their voice is becoming louder, but that’s also a consequence of the geopolitical situation we’re in,” said the senior western European diplomat. “I’m not sure if it’s sustainable in the long run.”
A second senior western European diplomat, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal alliance dynamics, said that the eastern flank countries sometimes take a tough tone “because of the fear of the pivot to China.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has also reiterated that western alliance members play a role in defending the eastern flank | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
Asked if the war has changed the balance of influence within the alliance, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said: “Yes and no.”
“We have to defend our territories, it is as simple as that,” she told POLITICO in Munich. “In order to do so we had to reinforce the eastern flank — Russia is on that part of the continent.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has also reiterated that western alliance members play a role in defending the eastern flank.
Asked whether NATO’s center of gravity is shifting east, he said on a panel in Munich that “what has shifted east is NATO’s presence.”
But, he added, “of course many of those troops come from the western part of the alliance — so this demonstrates how NATO is together and how we support each other.”
And in western Europe, there is a sense that the east does deserve attention at the moment.
“They might not have all the might,” said the second senior western European diplomat. “But they deserve solidarity.”
