NATO Chief Calls for Russia to Withdraw from Ukraine

By Stephen Fidler, The Wall Street Journal

28 October 2014

The new civilian head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said the alliance wants a cooperative relationship with Russia, but that Moscow needed to take “clear steps” first to bring ties back from their post-Cold War low.

In his first major policy speech since assuming the role of NATO secretary-general on Oct. 1, Jens Stoltenberg struck a less-combative tone than his predecessor toward Russia, which he noted was NATO’s biggest neighbor.

“We simply can’t ignore each other. One way or another, we will have a relationship. The question is what kind of relationship,” he said. “NATO continues to aspire to a cooperative relationship with Russia but to get there Russia would need to want it and to take clear steps to make it possible.”

Tensions between the 28-nation alliance and Moscow have been severely strained this year by Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. Just last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a fiery condemnation of NATO and U.S. actions in supporting Kiev.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal after his speech, Mr. Stoltenberg said Russia had “removed substantial number of regular troops from parts of eastern Ukraine but they still have special forces in eastern Ukraine and they have substantial forces in Crimea”—which Russia annexed in March over Kiev’s objections.

Asked what would be required for Russia to improve the basis for cooperation, Mr. Stoltenberg said: “Change in their behavior because now they are violating international law…using force to change borders.”

He reiterated NATO’s call for Moscow to withdraw all of its forces from Ukraine.

Mr. Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, also rejected Mr. Putin’s assertions that NATO and the West had spurned cooperation.

He cited the NATO-Russia Council, the admission of Russia into the World Trade Organization and the Group of Eight developed economies as examples where Russia had been taken into important international organizations.

But now Russia appeared to be reversing course, he said. “Russia is in a way pulling back on many of these areas where we have made this kind of progress.”

In his speech, he said that a strengthened NATO was essential to ensuring relations with Russia improved, and that the relationship needed to have “greater transparency and predictability” to “make sure that crises don’t spiral out of control.”

He said that Russia’s actions in Ukraine had spurred NATO to agree at its Wales summit in September to “the biggest reinforcement of our collective defense since the Cold War.” The actions had severely damaged trust with Moscow and posed a major challenge to trans-Atlantic security.

The summit decisions included the creation of a new so-called Spearhead Force, meant to react rapidly to threats from the east and south. He said defense ministers would decide on the size of the force in February, but couldn’t give an indication of when it would be operational.

Meanwhile, he said NATO is working to form an interim force—probably from elements of the existing NATO Response Force, which it says currently can deploy up to 13,000 land, sea and air troops “within days.”

“We are looking into the possibility of making that [force] more ready, more able to deploy on a shorter notice as a kind of interim solution until we have a full Spearhead Force in place,” he said in the interview.

He said NATO had boosted air patrols near Russia fivefold compared with last year, increased sea patrols in the Baltic and Black seas, and rotated more ground troops on exercises into eastern allies.

He said NATO intended to keep up in 2015 the current tempo of military exercises. This year, some 200 exercises—160 under the NATO umbrella and a further 40 undertaken by NATO nations—will have been held.

Featured Image: NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg gives a policy speech entitled at an event hosted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, in Brussels on Tuesday. Copyright 2014, Associated Press

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