The Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation, Jens Stoltenberg, said the alliance must not allow Moscow’s
invasion of Ukraine to escalate into a confrontational war between the allied
countries and Russia.
Stoltenberg said this in an interview with AFP on Friday at
the Antalya diplomacy forum hosted in Turkey.
“We have a responsibility to prevent this conflict from
escalating beyond Ukraine’s borders to becoming a full-fledged war between
Russia and NATO,” he said.
The NATO chief warned that a ‘no-fly zone’ over Ukraine would “most likely lead to a full war between NATO and Russia”, causing “so much more suffering, so much more death and destruction”.
He further clarified that a ‘no-fly zone’ over Ukrainian
space would imply that NATO would have to take out Russian air defence systems
not only in Ukraine, but along its borders of Belarus and Russia.
“It will mean that we
need to be ready to shoot down Russian planes because a no-fly zone is not only
something you declare you have to impose it,” Stoltenberg affirmed.
He, however, expressed piquant worry over president Putin’s
“senseless war”, reiterating NATO’s directive urging Moscow to immediately
“withdraw all its forces and engage in good faith in diplomatic political
efforts to find a political solution”.
He also commended Turkey’s armistice in facilitating
peace-talks between the foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine in Antalya.
“It is important that allies continue to try to support,
facilitate a political solution,” he averred.
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