NATO doubles its battlegroups in Eastern Europe ahead of multiple summits.

NATO is doubling its battlegroups on the alliance’s eastern flank in response to Russia’s continuing war in Ukraine, the group’s secretary general said on Wednesday before a major summit in which President Biden will meet with European allies in Brussels in the coming days.

The secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, also focused on what import Russia’s potential use of any chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine could hold for NATO, saying that such use would “fundamentally change the nature of the conflict.” And he upped the rhetoric on China’s role in bringing the conflict to an end, cautioning Beijing not to provide material support to Moscow.

“The first step is the deployment of four new NATO battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, along with our existing forces in the Baltic countries and Poland,” he said. Read more

@nytimes