Category: Europe

The Secretary General and Minister Umerov discussed the latest battlefield developments and Ukraine’s urgent military needs. With winter expected to complicate fighting, Mr Stoltenberg stressed that Allies are committed to stepping up political and practical support to Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia’s invasion. The Secretary General reiterated that NATO will provide long-term support to Ukraine to make Ukraine’s forces fully interoperable within NATO and bring them even closer to the Alliance.
 
Secretary General Stoltenberg and Minister Umerov also discussed Ukraine’s path to NATO membership and Ukraine’s reform efforts. Mr Stoltenberg reiterated that Ukraine will become a member of NATO when all Allies agree and when conditions are met. 
 
Monday’s talks follow a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council at Foreign Ministers level last Wednesday (29 November 2023). Mr Stoltenberg previously met Minister Umerov in Kyiv in September, and during the meeting of NATO Defence Ministers in October.

Exercise Cyber Coalition is NATO’s flagship cyber exercise and one of the largest in the world. This year’s edition brought together more than 1,300 cyber defenders from 28 NATO Allies and 7 partner countries, as well as the European Union and participants from industry and academia. This year’s exercise took place in Tallinn, Estonia, as well as remotely, in national capitals and other locations.

“Cyber Coalition is unique because it is the only cyber exercise in NATO that is not a competition. We all work together as a family of cyber defenders. This collaboration is what makes us stronger and more resilient to cyber threats. This year, the cooperation between all participants has been exceptional” said Commander Charles Elliott (US Navy), Exercise Director.

The Cyber Coalition 2023 scenario is based on real-life cyber challenges, including attacks on critical infrastructure such as electrical substations, energy grids and water treatment plants, as well as the disruption of NATO and Allied assets while in operations. The aim is to enhance NATO’s, Allies’ and partners’ resilience to cyber threats and their ability to conduct cyber operations together.

Cyber Coalition is also a perfect venue for cyberspace experimentation, supporting NATO’s capability development and transformation in the cyber domain. During Cyber Coalition 23, NATO’s Allied Command Transformation spearheaded three experimentations to improve cyber awareness, information sharing and automated data exploitation, and enhance the protection of military missions against cyber-attacks.

The 28 participating Allies were: Albania, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Türkyie, United Kingdom, United States.

The 7 participating NATO partner countries were: Georgia, Ireland, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine

The EUMS – NATO IMS Director Generals (DGs) Conference enables both DGs and their respective staffs to report on the progress of the joint work plan agreed by the EUMS and the NATO IMS, as well as to exchange views and discuss ongoing collaboration and cooperation between both organisations. 

The 20th EUMS-IMS DGs Conference was Lt Gen Van der Laan’s first as Director General of the EUMS. In his opening remarks, he welcomed the NATO Director General of the IMS and his staff back to the EUMS HQ. He also took the opportunity to acknowledge that the EU-NATO partnership was more important than ever with regard to the current global security climate. “This conference is one of the best examples of the fruitful cooperation between NATO and the EU. Its steady pace is instrumental in developing the excellent cooperation even further.” 

Taking the floor, Lieutenant General Janusz Adamczak, thanked the EUMS for hosting the conference and for the ongoing staff-to-staff cooperation between both organisations. Lieutenant General Adamczak emphasised the importance of the meeting as “an essential activity, not only because it guides the cooperation between our two staffs, but more importantly, because it is a key part of the larger effort to increase the over-all level of NATO-EU cooperation in line with the political expectation, reflected in our higher political documents such as the NATO Strategic Concept, the EU Strategic Compass and, most recently, the Vilnius communique”.

EUMS Deputy Director General, Major General Gábor Horvath introduced the agenda for the conference. Agenda items included follow-on tasks from the previous EUMS-IMS DGs Conference, which took place in June 2023. Major General Horvath outlined the continuing EU-NATO cooperation and information exchange in a number of key areas, which are central to further collaboration. Areas of discussion included Military Mobility, Medical Cooperation, CIS/Cyber interoperability and Gender perspectives. The joint EUMS and IMS staffs also discussed topics such as EU-NATO information exchange and the follow-on tasks for the next conference.  The meeting concluded with both DG EUMS and DG NATO IMS providing their guidance and closing remarks on the way ahead for 2024. 

The next EUMS-IMS DGs Conference will be hosted by NATO and is scheduled to take place in May 2024.
 

In a panel discussion, the Secretary General emphasised the need to manage the security impact of climate change, saying that “climate change creates crisis and crisis undermines the possibility for combating climate change.” Given the inextricable link between the two, he explained that climate change is therefore at the core of NATO’s mission for pursuing peace and security for the Alliance.

He also emphasised the need to ensure the energy transition away from fossil fuels and towards secure and renewable energy supplies. He said: “we need to ensure that when we implement the energy transition away from fossil fuels to more reliable and less polluting sources of energy, we have to make sure that we don’t do that in a way which undermines energy security.” “Russia used gas as a tool to try to coerce us after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We should not make the same mistakes as we develop a new renewable energy sources,” he said. NATO is “therefore investing in programmes to develop new more environmentally [friendly] technologies” that will “reduce the [reliance on] fossil fuels,” he added.

NATO is adapting its militaries, both to the changing climate and to reduce emissions. The Secretary General said NATO has prioritised addressing climate change at the top of its agenda and agreed specific targets to reduce emissions from NATO bodies and commands by 2030 “and by 2050, we should be as a net zero in the armed forces.” He added that NATO is harnessing technological innovation in green defence and integrating climate considerations into its military plans, exercises and capabilities.

The panel discussion included Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas , Icelandic Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, President of Timor-Leste José Ramos-Horta, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme Inger Andersen, Founding Director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy Jason Bordoff, and Chairman of the Munich Security Conference Christoph Heusgen.

The Secretary General will also meet other international leaders, including President of Iraq Abdul Latif Rashid, and President of Mauritania Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, and US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, during his visit to Dubai.