NATO Summit sends a message to Russia

WASHINGTON (EFE).— On the occasion of the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Atlantic Alliance, U.S. President Joe Biden said yesterday that the military alliance is more “powerful than ever.”

“Today, NATO is more powerful than ever before, with the strength of 32 nations,” Biden said at the commemoration ceremony at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, where the leaders of the 32 members of the Alliance are gathered to celebrate the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty, in that same place on April 4, 1949.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the time has come to support freedom and democracy, and Ukraine is the place to do so.

“The time to support freedom and democracy is now. The place is Ukraine,” he said.

Speaking at the summit, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the United States had warned Russia that NATO “is prepared to defend every inch of its territory” and that this year alone the group will spend $500 billion on defense.

In a speech in Washington, Sullivan said that the steps NATO has taken in recent years to modernize itself send an “unequivocal message” that it is prepared to defend its territories “now and in the future.”

In Moscow yesterday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, strengthening ties between the two countries as Western leaders met at a NATO summit and Russia stepped up attacks in Ukraine.

Putin and Modi were photographed visiting an exhibition on nuclear technology in space.

Trump’s claim

Meanwhile, former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump yesterday demanded that European members of NATO pay at least the same amount that the United States allocates to military support for Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion.

“If I had not been president, NATO would probably no longer exist,” Trump said on his social network Truth Trump, who claimed that during his term, from 2017 to 2021, he managed to get the rest of the allies to increase their economic contributions, making “NATO viable again.”