NATO could have done more to arm Ukraine to try to prevent Russia's invasion in 2022, the outgoing head of the Western military alliance said in an interview released on September 14. "Now we provide military stuff to a war -- then we could have provided military stuff to prevent the war," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told the German weekly newspaper FAS. Stoltenberg pointed to alliance’s reluctance to provide weapons that Kyiv had asked for before Russia's full-scale invasion because of fears that tensions with Russia would escalate. Stoltenberg, a former prime minister of Norway, will step down in October from his role at NATO.
Stoltenberg Says NATO Could Have Done More To Prevent Ukraine War
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg during one of his last official visits in September.