Ms Kallas said at the press conference in Brussels that Estonia, which donates more than 40 percent of its military budget to Ukraine, would increase its spending on its own army to 3 percent of its GDP, above the NATO target of 2 percent.
And Mr Stoltenberg said Wagner’s uprising showed “that President Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine is a major strategic mistake”. But he warned NATO allies not to underestimate Moscow’s capabilities.
“We must continue to support Ukraine and we must keep our defenses strong to send a clear signal to Moscow and Minsk that NATO is protecting every inch of Allied territory,” he said, referring to the governments of Russia and Belarus. Russia. He said it was too early to say what Wagner’s possible move could mean for the region.
At the end of May, NATO, which collectively defends the Baltic states, ended an ambitious military exercise in Estonia called Spring Storm involving some 14,000 troops from at least 11 countries. NATO’s reach in the Baltic states was significantly increased by Finland’s entry into the military alliance in March. Gaining access to that country’s military and to Finland’s airspace, ports and shipping lanes also improved NATO’s ability to deter Moscow’s aggression.
Ms. Kallas made additional remarks after the press conference in Brussels, saying it was “increasingly clear now that Ukraine is winning this war”, and that it was time to step up the pressure on Russia and send a strong message of alliance unity and perseverance to Moscow.
She also urged the European Union to use confiscated Russian financial assets to help fund Ukraine’s reconstruction, while admitting that some member states were opposed to creating a legal precedent for this.
The war in Ukraine will end, she said, “when Russia realizes it made a mistake and cannot win this war.” But its aggression, she said, must not be rewarded with territorial gains or it will try again, as it did after annexing Crimea in 2014 and met with a weak Western response.