NATO faced rebukes from Moscow and Beijing on Thursday after it declared Russia a &direct threat& and said China posed &serious challenges & to global stability.The Western military alliance was wrapping up a summit in Madrid, where it issued a stark warning that the world has been plunged into a dangerous phase of big-power competition and myriad threats, from cyberattacks to climate change, The Associated Press reported.NATO leaders also formally invited Finland and Sweden to join the alliance, after overcoming opposition from Turkey.
If the Nordic nations& accession is approved by the 30 member nations, it will give NATO a new 1,300 kilometer border with Russia.Russian President Vladimir Putin warned he would respond if the Nordic pair allowed NATO troops and military infrastructure onto their territory.
He said Russia would have to &create the same threats for the territory from which threats against us are created.Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said Putin's threats were ¬hing new.Of course, we have to expect some kind of surprises from Putin, but I doubt that he is attacking Sweden or Finland directly,& Kallas said as she arrived at the summit's conference center venue.
&We will see cyberattacks definitely.
We will see hybrid attacks, information war is going on.
But not the conventional war.China accused the alliance of &maliciously attacking and smearing& the country.
Its mission to the European Union said NATO &claims that other countries pose challenges, but it is NATO that is creating problems around the world.NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Moscow's invasion of Ukraine had brought ''the biggest overhaul of our collective defense since the end of the Cold War.The invasion shattered Europe's peace, and in response NATO has poured troops and weapons into Eastern Europe on a scale unseen in decades.
Member nations have given Ukraine billions in military and civilian aid to strengthen its resistance, AP reported.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who addressed the summit by video link, asked for more.
He urged NATO to send modern artillery systems and other weapons and warned the leaders they either had to provide Kyiv with the help it needed or &face a delayed war between Russia and yourself.The question is, who's next? Moldova? Or the Baltics? Or Poland? The answer is: all of them,& he said.At the summit, NATO leaders agreed to dramatically scale up military force along the alliance's eastern flank, where countries from Romania to the Baltic states worry about Russia's future plans.They announced plans to increase almost eightfold the size of the alliance's rapid reaction force, from 40,000 to 300,000 troops, by next year.
The troops will be based in their home nations but dedicated to specific countries in the east, where the alliance plans to build up stocks of equipment and ammunition.United States President Joe Biden, whose country provides the bulk of NATO's firepower, announced a hefty boost in America's military presence in Europe, including a permanent United States base in Poland, two more Navy destroyers based in Rota, Spain, and two more F35 squadrons in the U.K.The expansion will keep 100,000 troops in Europe for the foreseeable future, up from 80,000 before the war in Ukraine began.The post Russia and China slam NATO after alliance raises alarm first appeared on Ariana News.