BRUSSELS — As President Biden and 29 other NATO leaders walked into the alliance’s sprawling headquarters in Brussels on Thursday morning, they passed a graffiti-streaked remnant of the Berlin Wall, a monument to Europe’s belief that it had won a permanent victory over nuclear power. armed, authoritarian adversary who challenged the West during the Cold War.
Now, exactly one month after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the mood that was steeped in the extraordinary NATO summit was a mixture of both fear and opportunity.
The fear is that the aftermath of the invasion has rapidly turned Europe into two armed camps again, although the Iron Curtain looks very different this time. Chances are, 30 days after a misguided war, Russia has already made so many mistakes that some NATO leaders believe that if the West plays the next phase right, Russia’s President Vladimir V. Putin will fail to achieve his ostensible goal of to take Ukraine.
That doesn’t mean the Ukrainians will win. Their land has been shattered, millions are scattered and homeless, and among the leaders gathered in Brussels there was an ominous sense that the scenes of destruction and violence could last for months or years. No one saw an outcome in which Mr Putin would withdraw. Instead, there was concern that he might double down and turn to chemical or even tactical nuclear weapons.
But there was a surprising tenacity in tackling Mr Putin — a sentiment that was nonexistent in all of Europe until the invasion began, and has only grown since then.
“I don’t think we have a choice,” said Roberta Metsola, the president of the European Parliament, as Mr Biden moved from NATO headquarters to the European Union headquarters on his day of emergency meetings. “We know that any indecision or disagreement will be exploited by Putin and his allies.”
Twice during the series of meetings, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky beamed in from his command post in Kiev and told the others that as proud as they are of how they have resisted Mr Putin, they have not done enough. Ukraine, he suggested, was waging a war for Europe — and a war that Europeans, like Ukrainians, could not lose, because Mr Putin would not stop at Ukraine’s borders.
Mr. Zelensky reminded them that a month ago—to this day—“I addressed you with a perfectly clear, logical request to help us close our heavens. In any format. Protect our people from Russian bombs and missiles.”
But “we haven’t heard a clear answer,” he said, without softening his criticism. “And you see the consequences today — how many people were killed, how many peaceful cities were destroyed.”
The meeting was Mr Biden’s idea, and some European diplomats were surprised, as they had to quickly come up with initiatives – from new sanctions to a statement that they would supply chemical and biological protective equipment to Ukraine – to signal that they are not just talking. about a problem.
Mr Biden, who later spoke to reporters, said his real goal was to make sure the pressure he built against Russia doesn’t fade.
“Look, if you’re Putin, and you think Europe is going to burst in a month, or six weeks, two months, they can handle anything for another month,” Biden said. But he said, “the reason I asked for the meeting is that we need to stay full, full, full” under constant pressure.
He even proposed to expel Russia from the Group of 20 Industrial Economies, an organization that includes China and mixes democracies and authoritarian states. Even if Russia cannot be removed, he suggested, Ukraine should be added to the meetings, a move that would infuriate Mr Putin.
Yet it is the early success of that print campaign that also creates the danger.
While the ostensible purpose of the sanctions is to force Mr Putin to withdraw from Ukraine, not a single leader speaking on the fringes of the meeting sounded as if there was much confidence that this would happen. On the contrary, the concern permeating NATO is that frustration, isolation and international criticism will drive Mr Putin to intensify the war.
That is why so much time was spent in NATO headquarters discussing how NATO might respond to an escalation – especially the use of chemical weapons, perhaps to force Mr Zelensky to leave Kiev, the capital. . Mr Biden, who was repeatedly asked about that answer after the meeting, dodged the question.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has spent the past two days describing the urgent need to provide the Ukrainians with protective equipment, saying that NATO countries would be wary of any atmospheric signal that chemical weapons could become. released.
War between Russia and Ukraine: important developments
“Our supreme military commander, General Wolters, has activated NATO’s chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense elements,” Mr Stoltenberg told reporters, referring to General Tod D. Wolters, NATO’s Supreme Commander, Europe, ” and allies put up additional chemical and biological and nuclear defenses.” That has not happened on this scale in modern memory, military experts say.
Officials won’t say what information underlies the warnings that Mr Putin could now turn to unconventional weapons — aside from the reality that he has done so before, against exiled spies and dissidents. And the possibility is being discussed publicly to dissuade Mr Putin from acting.
Just a month ago, few could have foreseen this danger. On the other hand, most mid-February assumptions have collapsed.
Before the invasion, NATO officials assumed that the Russians were unstoppable, that they would march through Ukraine in 30 days, capturing the southeast and the capital, according to their own war plan. While few believe the Ukrainian armed forces can win, there is a widespread assumption that they could fight Russia to a stalemate and halt its advance around the capital.
The accepted pre-invasion wisdom in Washington and some European capitals was that Mr. Putin was a master tactician and that he had made his economy “sanction proof”. Today it is clear that he has made himself very vulnerable, living off one major revenue stream: Europe’s addiction to Russian fossil fuels, the only import the continent has not blocked so far.
A month ago, President Biden’s speech to favor democracy over autocracy seemed like a hazy ideological shimmer around his plans to attack China. Today, when Biden got leaders to approve a new program to strengthen other fragile democratic states that feared they would be in Mr Putin’s crosshairs next time, it has a different meaning.
Mary K. Brooks contributed to research.