The military presence of NATO forces in Poland, Romania, Slovakia and other states of the eastern part of the Alliance protects the space used by allies to support Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday in Brussels.

missiles 3M-54 CaliberPhoto: Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation / TASS / Profimedia

At the press conference, he was asked whether he considered the incident on Friday, when Russian missiles entered the airspace of the Republic of Moldova and approached the airspace of Romania, as a warning from Russia and whether there was any threat to the supply routes through which NATO countries Having provided military support to Ukraine, Stoltenberg said that “wars are dangerous” and that is why it is so important that NATO is vigilant to prevent any escalation.

  • “Wars are also dangerous because incidents and accidents can happen.
  • That is why we are so vigilant in NATO to prevent any escalation outside of Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said at a press conference before the meeting of defense ministers of allied countries, reports Agerpres.

He said this is one of the reasons why NATO increased its military presence in the eastern part of the Alliance and in the Black Sea region from the fall of 2021, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with air, sea and land capabilities.

  • “We did this in part to monitor, to protect, to make sure that there would be no escalation outside of Ukraine, and to be able to manage incidents or accidents that might happen when we have a full-scale war next door in Ukraine.
  • But, of course, this military presence of NATO forces in Poland, Romania, Slovakia, other countries from the eastern part of the Alliance protects the space that NATO allies use to support Ukraine. And this makes it even more important to increase our presence in the eastern part of the Alliance. NATO is not part of the conflict, but we support Ukraine, Ukraine’s right to self-defense is a right provided for in the UN Charter, and we have the right to support Ukraine,” said Jens Stoltenberg.

On Friday, the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Moldova confirmed that it had detected a missile that flew over Transnistria and over a village in Sorok district near the border with Ukraine.

The head of the Ukrainian army Valery Zaluzhny. but Volodymyr Zelensky also claimed that two Kalibr cruise missiles also flew through Romanian airspace, but the Romanian Ministry of Defense denied this.