NATO may have prevented Russian invasion if it had given Ukraine enough weapons after 2014 - Stoltenberg

Former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg believes that if NATO countries had provided weapons to Ukraine after the beginning of Russia's occupation of Crimea and parts of Donbas in 2014, a full-scale war could have been prevented.

He said this in an interview with Politico, Ukrinform reports.

"The war didn't start in 2022, it started in 2014, both with the illegal annexation of Crimea, but also when Russia went into eastern Donbas in the summer of 2014. And NATO allies provided some support to Ukraine," Stoltenberg said.

He recalled that one of his first visits was to Yavoriv, a NATO training facility for Ukraine back in 2015.

"I worked hard to try to convince NATO allies to do more, to provide more military support, more training. Some allies did, but it was relatively limited, and that was very difficult for many years because the policy in NATO was that NATO should not provide lethal support to Ukraine," Stoltenberg said.

According to him, "no one can say with certainty, but I continue to believe that if we had armed Ukraine more after 2014, we might have prevented Russia from invading — at least we would have increased the threshold for a full-scale invasion."

If the NATO countries had delivered a fraction of the weapons they have delivered after 2022, "we may have actually prevented the war, instead of supporting Ukraine's effort to defend itself in a war," he added.

Photo: Yonhap