Russia–NATO relations

The total number of battle-ready forces now comprises some 40,000 troops. The US on its own has also moved additional troops to these countries based on its own bilateral agreements with them.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, said on Sunday, after talks with the Finnish president, that the Alliance's goal was to strengthen Ukraine's position during peace talks with Russia, but added one "painful sentence".
"Every peace agreement involves compromise, including territory."

Turkey does not belong in NATO, but there is no formal mechanism to expel wayward members

"Surely, Russia will not look at these things positively (Sweden's and Finland's accession to NATO). Russia is primarily concerned about the Finnish issue. Why? Because this is a border country and therefore does not support Finland's NATO membership.

NATO is no longer bound by past commitments to hold back from deploying its forces in eastern Europe, the US-led alliance's deputy secretary general said Sunday.

Moscow itself has "voided of any content" the NATO-Russia Founding Act, by attacking Ukraine and halting dialogue with the alliance, Mircea Geoana told AFP.

He reminded at the World Economic Forum in Davos that since the outbreak of the war, NATO has "significantly strengthened its support for Ukraine in order to retain the right to self-defense", reports TASS.

He also believes that the West should not be afraid of Russia's threat of nuclear or other retaliation.
"If we want to achieve any success in our relations with Russia, in this situation when Russia invaded Ukraine, we can only succeed if we use brutal force, because only brutal force, brutal power is able to stop Russia," Duda said for the Wall Street Journal.

NATO has launched major military exercises on its eastern flank.

From 1 to 27 May, Defender Europe 2022 and Swift Response 2022 will be held in nine NATO countries with 18,000 troops from more than 20 countries. This was announced on May 1 on the website of the Armed Forces of Poland, one of the host countries, quoted by the Ukrainian site "Gordonua".

"Russia's special military operation will end when NATO stops using Ukrainian territory to threaten Russia," said Alexei Polishchuk.

"Putin actually invented all these explanations that NATO is a threat to Russia. If we go back 20 years, when I was the prime minister, and he had the first presidential term, we see that Russia then had excellent relations with the United States and NATO in general", Kasyanov said.