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NATO shakes up Russia strategy over Ukraine crisis

04 September 2014 04:54 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. NATO will bolster its eastern defenses and buttress support for Kiev at a summit starting on Thursday, prompted by the Ukraine crisis to enact the most radical shift in its strategy towards Russia since the end of the Cold War, APA reports quoting Reuters.

U.S. President Barack Obama and other NATO leaders meeting at the Celtic Manor resort in south Wales will also discuss how to tackle Islamic State which has emerged as a new threat on the alliance's southern flank.

As more than a decade of NATO-led combat operations in Afghanistan draws to a close at year's end, the 28-nation, U.S.-led military alliance is refocusing in part on its core task of defending its territory.

NATO leaders will set up a "spearhead" rapid reaction force, potentially including several thousand troops, that could be sent to a hotspot in as little as two days, officials say.

Eastern European NATO members, including Poland, have appealed to NATO to permanently station thousands of troops on its territory to deter any possible Russian attack.

But NATO members have spurned that idea, partly because of the expense and partly because they do not want to break a 1997 agreement with Russia under which NATO committed not to permanently station significant combat forces in the east.

Instead NATO leaders will agree to pre-position equipment and supplies, such as fuel and ammunition, in eastern European countries with bases ready to receive the NATO rapid reaction force if needed.

NATO has said it has no plans to intervene militarily in Ukraine, which is not a member.

Instead it has concentrated on beefing up the defenses of eastern European countries that have joined the alliance in the last 15 years. Baltic countries fear that Russia could use the same rationale it applied in Crimea - defending Russian speakers - to meddle with them.