Your Evening Briefing: NATO to Bolster Flank, Warns Russia on Chemical Weapons
Ukrainian firefighters and servicemen work amid the rubble of a shopping mall near Kyiv on Marc 21 after it was destroyed in deadly strike by Russia.
Photographer: Fadel Senna/AFP
If Vladimir Putin hoped his war on Ukraine would shake up the global order, he was right—but likely not in the way he envisioned. NATO said Wednesday it would add more battlegroups including thousands more troops on its eastern flank and pledged to help Ukraine if Putin (as U.S. intelligence has warned he might) uses weapons of mass destruction. “Any use of chemical weapons would totally change the nature of the conflict,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stolenberg warned. The U.S. has repeatedly said that Moscow may be planning to stage a “false flag” event as pretext to use such weapons, a strategy the Kremlin was accused of trying out before launching its war one month ago. On the economic front, Putin is trying to leverage the energy market to his advantage, demanding so-called unfriendly nations pay for gas in Russian rubles. The move has the potential to aggravate Europe’s worst energy crunch since the 1970s. The European Union has said it would continue to tighten sanctions against Russia, but given its reliance on Russia for fossil fuel, wouldn’t include energy. That said, the EU and the U.S. are close to a deal aimed at slashing Europe’s dependence on Russian energy.
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