NATO allies have reached a new agreement to shift some of the responsibility for security assistance and training for Ukrainian forces more broadly across the Western alliance.
The United States has, in recent years, been the leading NATO member handling security assistance and training for Ukraine’s military, particularly as it contends with a war on its eastern front with Russia. Much of the assistance for Ukraine has been coordinated through the Pentagon-run Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG).
The new agreement,
announced by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on June 14, would establish a new Ukraine aid coordinating center in Wiesbaden, Germany. The new plan doesn’t close out the Pentagon-led UDCG but instead works as a complement to the existing Pentagon-led coordinating office.
This new coordinating office will still be housed at a U.S. military base but will be staffed by about 700 personnel from across the NATO alliance and other nations that back Ukraine. The office will also oversee several logistical nodes along the eastern edge of the alliance.
The new NATO coordinating office will be placed under the responsibility of NATO’s Allied Command Operations (ACO), led by NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe (SACEUR). The SACEUR has historically been a position held by a U.S. general, and U.S. Army Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli currently holds that office while also leading the U.S. European Command.
Mr. Stoltenberg said that by putting NATO in the lead coordinating role for Ukraine assistance, “we are ensuring that the support is more robust, more coherent.” He said the new arrangement will also improve interoperability between NATO and Ukrainian forces and help to “reconcile the short-term and the long-term needs” of Ukraine’s military forces.
US Political Rift Over Ukraine Aid
The new NATO agreement comes as numerous congressional Republicans have signaled opposition to new rounds of Ukraine-related aid. And former President Donald Trump—the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee—has repeatedly suggested he would prefer to quickly negotiate a settlement to end the ongoing Russia–Ukraine conflict if he regained the White House. More recently, the former president said he would prefer to see continued U.S. aid for Ukraine be
structured in the form of a loan.
President Joe Biden
apologized to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week for a drawn-out debate within Congress about whether to approve a $95 billion foreign aid package that included around $61 billion in new Ukraine-related aid. The aid package was complicated by disagreements between Republicans and Democrats over assistance for Ukraine and Israel, along with calls for new U.S. border security spending and policy reforms.
President Biden and Mr. Zelenskyy, on June 13, also signed a 10-year bilateral
security agreement signifying a continuing U.S. commitment to support the war-torn country against Russian aggression. The
agreement outlines areas of continued security cooperation between the United States and Ukraine but doesn’t list any new specific U.S. financial commitments to Ukraine and states at the end that it doesn’t constitute a binding legal obligation.
Last week, the leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) nations—the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the UK—reached a deal to utilize about $50 billion in frozen Russian assets as collateral for an additional loan to support Ukraine.
Separately, Mr. Stoltenberg has also called for NATO’s members to collectively contribute at least $40 billion each year to sustain support for Ukraine. The NATO official
said this week that his proposal will also mitigate issues with some alliance members who have pledged new rounds of support for Ukraine but failed to make good on those commitments.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this article.
