“NATO’s meeting in Warsaw next month portends to be its most significant summit since the end of the Cold War. No previous summit in this era has had to address a set of challenges as complex, proximate, and forbidding and as those now present on the alliance’s eastern and southern frontiers. The most urgent of these challenges is the destabilizing combination of Russia’s geopolitical assertiveness and growing military power. The decisions NATO promulgates in Warsaw must present a credible deterrent to Russian aggression. …
President Putin’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine is but one element of a revanchist policy that he has articulated and exercised since taking office in 1999. His central objective is clear – the re-establishment of the power, territorial control, and hegemony of the former Soviet Union. …
NATO leaders at the Warsaw summit should embrace Ukraine’s and Georgia’s European and trans-Atlantic ambitions, including their desire to join NATO. These nations should be given a clear road map toward that goal. … The alliance should expand the security assistance it provides Ukraine. The time is long overdue for the United States and others to grant Ukraine the ‘lethal defensive equipment’ it has requested, including anti-tank, air defense and other weapons. …
NATO should also conduct exercises and ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance] operations in Ukraine to signal solidarity, train the Ukrainian armed forces and provide them better situational awareness. None of these actions would threaten Russia’s territorial integrity, but they would complicate Russian military planning and increase the risk that would come with further aggression deeper into Ukraine. They would help erase the red line that Moscow has been allowed to draw across Europe. Failure to transform the NATO-Ukraine partnership in this way will not avoid conflict with Russia, it will only ensure that Ukraine remains weak in the face of Russian aggression. That is not only an enticement for Putin’s revanchist ambitions, it is yet another recipe for an enduring military confrontation with Moscow.”
– Atlantic Council Senior Fellow Ian Brzezinski testifying on June 23 before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the hearing “NATO: Reviewing the Agenda and Assessing the Potential Outcomes of the Warsaw Summit.”