NATO will “stand by Ukraine” to achieve lasting peace, a senior official told the BBC

NATO “will stand by Ukraine until the day we get them to sit around the table for a lasting peace,” a senior official from the military alliance told the BBC.

Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, chairman of NATO’s military committee since January, added from an operational perspective that he considered the Russia-Ukraine war deadlocked and “it was almost time to sit down and talk because it is a waste of lives.”

Pointing to the fact that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 saw two more countries join the Western alliance – Finland and Sweden – Admiral Dragon described the war as a strategic failure for Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite Russia’s recent slow, incremental progress on the battlefield.

“They will not get a friendly or puppet government like in Belarus. Putin will not succeed.”

Asked if European nations were ready to continue supporting Ukraine’s defense, he said they were. It was helpful, he believed, that they had received something of a wake-up call and were now taking responsibility for their own protection.

In June, NATO members agreed to increase their defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. The move followed repeated calls by US President Donald Trump for members to do so.

To Russia recent announcement of long-range nuclear-powered weapons Like Stormtrooper and Poseidon, the former Italian defense chief and naval aviator played down NATO’s concerns, saying it was a defensive nuclear alliance.

“We are not threatened by them,” he said, “we are just ready to defend our 32 nations and one billion people. We are a nuclear alliance.”

As for the risk of future invasions or attacks, Admiral Dragoun said that if – and he emphasized the conditional here – there would be anywhere, it would probably be the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

But he indicated that because NATO had declared, Article 5 – which considers an attack on one nation equivalent to an attack on all – would be invoked and that NATO would come to their defence.

Asked if that included the US, he said: “Yes, because they have committed to it and emphasized that they are still in business.”

Of all NATO’s defense needs right now, Admiral Dragone said air defense is the most important priority. Recent incursions by Russian drones in Poland and Romania have prompted the alliance to improve its air defenses.

On the possibility of activating a conditional “drone wall” on NATO’s eastern borders, he said it would be done within months and that “Alliance Transformation Command in Norfolk (Virginia) is already working on it.”

“There’s a lot on the market that will meet our immediate needs, so we’ve created a new business which is Eastern Guard… integrating all the air defenses we already have on our eastern flank.

“Airspace incursions are quite common, we escort them and that’s basically the game,” the admiral said.

Although there are no signs that Russia is changing course on the war in Ukraine, and despite signs that some members – notably Slovakia and Hungary – are increasingly opposed to supporting Ukraine’s defense, Admiral Dragon ended on a positive note.

“The alliance is reliable, it is mature, there is a cohesion that is our center of gravity.”

“The alliance is stronger than our adversaries and we will stand with Ukraine until the day peace breaks out,” he added.