Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky took the floor at the B9 Summit to tell participants that “Central and Eastern Europe are under Russian threat.”
Zelensky who arrived on Wednesday afternoon on a A319, believed to be stationed in Poland for safety reasons, came straight to the summit from the airport, to join fellow guests Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary-General and Polish President Karol Nawrocki.
“This format is important,” he told NATO and regional leaders. “Central and Eastern Europe are under Russian threat.”
He thanked participants for their presence and said Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine should not happen elsewhere.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 saying it posed an existential threat as it had been invited to become a member of the defensive military alliance. Ukraine received the invitation to join NATO in Bucharest 2008, but there were no concrete plans or a timeline for membership, even 14 years later when the invasion began.
Russia is waging a hybrid war against Europe in which it strives to stir up social division, create feelings of resentment against the West, and promote nationalist themes. It promotes what it calls ‘sovereignty’ and religion while its bugbears are the European Union and rights for minorities such as the LGBT community and migrants.
NATO Allies’ airspace has been violated by Russian drones regularly. Moscow has denied they are intentional but neighboring countries see the breaches as a test of their resolve and a gauging of their response.
Since Russia’s invasion, Sweden and Finland, which were previously neutral, joined NATO.
The Bucharest Nine (B9) format was launched in 2014 as a Polish-Romanian initiative aimed at coordinating positions and exchanging views in the field of security between the nine countries located across the Baltic and Black Sea regions.
The Bucharest Nine comprises Poland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia.
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