Nato to double its battle groups along eastern frontier

BRUSSELS • The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) has announced a doubling of its military presence near Ukraine and said the alliance would help the country prepare for possible chemical, biological and even nuclear threats from the Russian invaders, which would be a once-unthinkable expansion in the month-old war.

The announcement by Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday came hours before United States President Joe Biden landed in Europe for an extraordinary strategy session with the military alliance, created in 1949 to contain the Soviet Union.

The warnings underscored the urgency of efforts to prevent the conflict from spreading beyond Ukraine's borders and entangling Nato in a direct fight with Russia.

The possibility that Russia might resort to weapons of mass destruction also reflected the Russian military's failure to achieve more than a stalemate so far in the face of an unexpectedly tenacious Ukrainian resistance.

The White House has set up a team of experts to plan how the US could respond should Russia use weapons of mass destruction during its invasion, senior administration officials said yesterday.

The White House National Security Council sent an internal memo to agencies on Feb 28 to create a strategy group to examine major geopolitical shifts that are occurring as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, officials said. A second group, known internally as the "Tiger Team", is looking at what the next three months look like.

Reflecting heightened concerns about Russian President Vladimir Putin's plans, Mr Stoltenberg said Nato was doubling its battle groups to eight along its eastern frontier. He said the additional four combat-ready, battalion-size units, which typically have several hundred troops each, were deploying in the eastern-flank countries of Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.

Nato had already rushed tens of thousands of troops to its eastern flank in the wake of Russia's invasion to counter the threat of any spillover from the conflict into alliance countries.

"All of this is the immediate response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine," Mr Stoltenberg said, adding that the forces would remain there "as long as necessary".

Yesterday, he accused Mr Putin of making a big mistake by invading Ukraine. "President Putin has made a big mistake and that is to launch a war against an independent sovereign nation. He has underestimated the strength of the Ukrainian people, the bravery of the Ukrainian people and their armed forces," he said ahead of a Nato summit in Brussels.

Mr Stoltenberg said the leaders of the US-led alliance would "address the need for a reset of our deterrence and defence in the longer term".

"We have a responsibility to ensure that this conflict does not escalate beyond Ukraine that will cause even more suffering, even more death, even more destruction."

Mr Biden had warned before heading to Europe of a "real threat" that the Kremlin could use chemical weapons in Ukraine.

Mr Stoltenberg told journalists that "any use of chemical weapons would fundamentally change the nature of the conflict". He said: "It will be a blatant violation of international law, and it will have widespread and severe consequences."

NYTIMES, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS