Defense ministers of NATO member countries could not agree on new defense plans for how the Alliance would respond to possible Russian aggression.
This is reported by the Reuters agency.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that for the first time since the end of the Cold War, ministers reviewed defense plans at a two-day meeting in Brussels and are close to agreeing on them.
But one of the diplomats interviewed by the journalists said that Turkey blocked the decision because of the wording of geographical locations, particularly Cyprus. NATO wants to find a solution before the July summit in Vilnius.
The thousands of pages of NATOʼs plan will contain secret military plans detailing the Allianceʼs response to a Russian attack.
For decades, NATO saw no need for large-scale defense plans because it felt that post-Soviet Russia no longer posed an existential threat. But currently the war in Ukraine has forced the Alliance to reconsider its opinion. NATO is now warning that a defense plan must be agreed before a conflict with the Kremlin could erupt.
NATO will also provide member countries with guidance on modernizing their armies and logistics.
"Although the regional plans were not formally approved today, we expect these plans to be part of a series of outcomes from the Vilnius summit in July," a senior US official told Reuters.
- The head of the Foreign Ministry Dmytro Kuleba said that at the NATO summit in Vilnius in July, the Alliance should make a political decision: present a timetable for Ukraineʼs accession or undertake to do so by the end of the year, so that this would be a signal to Russia. The President Volodymyr Zelensky will also come to the July summit — he has accepted the invitation.