Doorstep statement

Happy to see you and happy to have this Defence Ministers meeting here today and tomorrow in Brussels.

Today, as you know, we will have the first opportunity to also welcome our Partners from the Indo-Pacific. New Zealand, Australia, Japan and South Korea and this is for the first time that they will participate in a defence ministerial meeting. The EU is also here today and that is important because we really want to reach out and work closely together with all our Partners and the EU is, as you know, a very important partner.

We will try to start the debate, building on what we have done for example at the Summit in Washington, of deepening that relationship and bringing it also forward in areas like innovation, how we can work together on industry production, how we can work together on fighting cyber crime et cetera and of course hybrid threats. So all of this will be discussed, no doubt, this afternoon.

Later today, I will have the honour to welcome President Volodymyr Zelenskyy here in this building. This will be my third opportunity to sit down with him after my visit to Kyiv couple of weeks ago and last week meeting him in London together with Prime Minister Keir Starmer. We have been on the phone so it is very good to have him here visiting to talk about what is happening now in Ukraine but also to update him on the considerable progress NATO is making on what we decided in Washington. The pledge, as you know, the 20.9 billion, are now in the pocket first half of this year and we are in a good space on delivering the full 40 billion at the end of this year.

I was on Monday in Wiesbaden at the Command being set up, NSATU, which will bring together so many aspects of our support for Ukraine in a coordinated manner. So I will update him on this.

And of course on all the ongoing efforts to make sure that for the long haul, if necessary, we will keep supporting Ukraine. And that is our message to Putin. We are in this, if necessary, for the long haul. Obviously we want to be in a place where Zelenskyy and Ukraine, from a position of strength, is able to start talks with Russia but till that moment comes he can count on continuing support and Putin cannot count on us letting go of that support. We will keep this going and this is what we are all committed about. This is what I hear consistently in all my talks in the Alliance.

I also welcome what the US has announced yesterday, they already of course pledged 8 billion, very concretely yesterday they pledged almost half a billion dollars in air defence and other aid going into Ukraine. I welcome the Australian announcement yesterday about tanks, which will go to Ukraine. This is all good news. There were many other announcements. I will not go through the whole list but these were a few of the big ones I would like to mention this morning.

With that I am happy to take your questions.

NATO Spokesperson: We will start with ZDF, please.

ZDF: NATO is also discussing new demands on MCRs, minimum capability requirements. Germany seems not to be able to fulfil these demands. How will you deal with that?

NATO Secretary General: Well don’t forget the speech Olaf Scholz gave to the Bundestag, basically the weekend, the Saturday or Sunday after the full onslaught of Russia on Ukraine. Obviously the whole of the Alliance has to work hard to make sure that we meet the targets, that we close the gaps. Now today we absolutely stand ready to defend NATO territory against any threat, but we want to make sure that also in the future we will be there. That will mean work for Germany, the Netherlands, France, UK, the US, all 32 Partners will work very hard to achieve that. But here the 100 billion pledged by Olaf Scholz was an important moment I think in German history. I really want to applaud him again for that particular moment.

NATO Spokesperson: inaudible

Question: Secretary General, top of President Zelenskyy list is of course an invitation to NATO, as it has long been. Do you get the sense that Allies are moving in their willingness to grant him this, what he considers, is the ultimate security guarantee, short of Article 5?

NATO Secretary General: What we have said in Washington and of course I will constantly repeat the language but I think it was significant, the irreversible path to NATO membership. So that means that yes in the future NATO will have as 32 or 34th member we will have Ukraine. At the moment it seems that it will be Ukraine as number 33 but maybe somebody else pops in front of him. But Ukraine will be a member of NATO in the future. That is what we decided in Washington. So the question is now about the timeline. What we are doing now with the pledge, on track, with what we are doing in Wiesbaden, the command, with what we are doing with all the bilateral aid going into Ukraine at the moment, all the efforts being coordinated amongst Allies, work on the reconstruction of Ukraine. The fact that we now have JATEC in Poland, which is working on the interoperability of Ukraine with NATO. This collectively, plus all the security guarantees bilaterally with Ukraine, they collectively constitute a bridge to NATO membership. Then the question is exactly about the when I cannot answer that now at this moment but clearly we are working on all these tracks to make sure that indeed one day Ukraine will be a member of NATO.

NATO Spokesperson: Next question to ARD please

ARD: What are the points you are going to focus on this afternoon with Mr Zelenskyy regarding the victory plan?

NATO Secretary General: Well first of all what we always do is update each other so I want to hear from him, where he is at  the moment, how he sees things developing on the Eastern front with Russia, obviously this is always now a list I will update him on the decision being made in NATO, where we are, as I mentioned, on the pledge, NSATU, JATEC and all the other initiatives being rolled out at the moment and again stress in my conversation with him that he has to be absolutely assured that 32 Allies are united in making sure that collectively we will do whatever is needed to make sure that Ukraine can prevail, that Putin will not get his way.

NATO Spokesperson: Okay, Swedish Television.

Swedish Television: Yes Mr Secretary General, good morning,

NATO Secretary General: It was a successful visit yesterday of your Prime Minister.

Swedish television: Yes I saw that. You are also supposed to discuss strategy of Russia during the meeting these days, clearly Russia is no longer to be called a partner of NATO but what is it then? Is it an adversary? Is it an enemy?  Is it a competitor? And why does this matter?

NATO Secretary General: When I had my first NATO summit in Portugal, we had President Medvedev who was then President, then for political reasons Putin was Prime Minister but then President Medvedev in a meeting with NATO and Russia. Those days are far behind, that will not happen in the near or distant future. I am convinced. So that brings us to the question how to deal with that particular relationship with Russia and that is a step by step approach. It might come up today, it will probably also be discussed when we have the Foreign Ministers meeting later this year and this will probably take us right through to summer next year when we have the NATO summit in The Hague. How do we relate to Russia long term, short term is clear making sure that Putin does not get his way in Ukraine but also for the longer term there are questions to be answered and as Secretary Genera I don’t want to pre-empt that debate but that is ongoing and rightly so because this is a relationship we really have to carve out for the long term.

NATO Spokesperson: Okay over to the gentleman there.

Question: does NATO have an assessment of how much support Belarus provides to Russia in its war against Ukraine and what kind of assistance it was and does Belarus continue to provide it?

NATO Secretary General: Well all evidence is that Belarus, that Minsk, is supporting Russia in the war effort with infrastructure, with territory and at a cost with your population, for the Belarussian population. I mean Belarus clearly is not doing this from a position of strength and that means that it is hurting the country. It is not helping you and it is helping and supporting Putin in the war effort against Ukraine and this has got to stop. But obviously that is up to Belarus and Belarussian politics and people to do that. But at this moment your country is suffering because of your President providing that support from a position of weakness.

NATO Spokesperson: Okay we will take two more questions. Gentleman in white.

Question: Hello, good morning, radio Bosnia and Herzegovina. Yesterday you talked about Russia’s influence in the Western Balkans, the risk for secessions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in KFOR’s role. What more should we expect Ministers to discuss about stability in the region, especially Bosnia and Herzegovina?

NATO Secretary General: Yes today of course, no sorry, tomorrow, when we meet with 32, today will be with our Partners Indo-Pacific, tonight we have President Zelenskyy visiting and after that the meeting of the NATO-Ukraine council but tomorrow we will meet with the 32 and there we will very much focus on all other issues and there is a long list including of course KFOR and that means we have to be aware of the tensions on the Western Balkans. The fact that the Pristina-Belgrade dialogue is not moving ahead as we would love to and would want to. The EU facilitated dialogue which we support and that we are worried about the secessionist tensions still trying to stir divisions in Bosnia and Herzegovina society. That will be no doubt on the agenda to make sure that we do everything in our messaging, in our concrete support to support the western Balkans and therefore I was particularly very glad that the meeting taking place earlier in Berlin this week under the leadership of Chancellor Scholz of the Western Balkans countries because I know that Germany is working particularly hard at bringing that group closer to EU, closer to NATO, for those who are not already in NATO et cetera.

NATO Spokesperson: Okay thank you. One final question.

Question: Swedish Radio. About the situation in the Middle East and how does this current situation affect NATO?

NATO Secretary General: Obviously I think all of us here are extremely worried about what is happening in the Middle East, in Gaza, Israel, of course in Lebanon at the moment. Israel is fighting on multiples fronts against Iran and its proxies, it is costing a lot of lives and the human suffering is paining all of us  and I know in my calls and meetings with Allies that they are on a hour to hour basis trying to navigate that crisis. NATO is obviously not as an organisation involved here. Indirectly, yes because NATO has an important mission in Iraq, on the request of the Iraqi government, helping them to build their military and to improve their capabilities, but obviously this is very much on our minds but probably not a main issue because of NATO not being part of that region. As Stoltenberg said before we cannot solve everything, we really have to concentrate on the Euro-Atlantic realm.

NATO Spokesperson: Thank you very much.

NATO Secretary General: See you later today, a couple of times.