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Conor right here: Notice the next is from US Blob affect outlet RFE/RL and is affected by falsehoods. It additionally omits that Stoltenberg is now chairman of the Munich Safety Convention, generally known as “Davos with weapons.”
All that mentioned, Stoltenberg’s e-book launch comes because the state of affairs goes from unhealthy to worse for Mission Ukraine forward of what guarantees to be a brutal winter. Whereas western media deal with Ukrainian assaults on Russian power infrastructure —which do have an impact however do nothing to vary the battle dynamics— right here’s what Ukraine is dealing with quickly, courtesy of Intellinews:
Russia’s retaliatory marketing campaign has seen gasoline manufacturing fall by some 60%, in accordance with feedback by Naftogaz final week, and ten areas out of a complete of 24 are already affected by blackouts or have been placed on emergency energy provide regimes, in accordance with Ukrenergo.
Ukraine was already wanting gasoline provides to get by means of the winter, with some 11bcm of gasoline in storage towards the 13bcm it must warmth and light-weight the nation till March. Ukraine produces some 20bcm of gasoline domestically every year and can be compelled to import the remainder. Nonetheless, with German gasoline tanks solely 75% full – by far the biggest in Europe after Ukraine’s – forward of an EU November 1 deadline to have 90%, the remainder of Europe can be wanting gasoline because the mercury begins to fall.
This helps clarify why, as Moon of Alabama put it yesterday, “EU-NATO Retreats From ‘Ukraine Is Successful’ To Begging For A Ceasefire.”
And right here’s Glenn Diesen with a neat abstract of the state of affairs:
Europe can not maintain the proxy conflict towards Russia by itself. The USA is promoting weapons it doesn’t must Europe, which may’t afford them, with the intention to arm Ukraine, which lacks the manpower to make use of them. pic.twitter.com/eb1cjdN2eY
— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) October 14, 2025
Let the finger pointing start.
By Ray Furlong, a Senior Worldwide Correspondent for RFE/RL. He has reported for RFE/RL from the Balkans, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and elsewhere since becoming a member of the corporate in 2014. He beforehand labored for 17 years for the BBC as a international correspondent in Prague and Berlin. Initially revealed at RFE/RL.
Former NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg says the alliance “was letting Ukraine down” by failing to ship sufficient assist throughout 2023-24, describing a “defeatist” temper in Washington and European nations failing to make promised arms deliveries.
Stoltenberg, who was head of the western navy alliance from October 2014 till October 2024, makes the criticisms in a brand new e-book, On My Watch, Main NATO In A Time Of Warfare, to be launched on October 23.
The e-book covers his total interval in workplace, together with NATO’s “defeat” in Afghanistan in 2021 and Russia’s preliminary aggression in Ukraine in 2014. It additionally ponders the way forward for the alliance following the election of Donald Trump as US president in 2024.
“The tone among the many allies is usually sharp,” Stoltenberg, who’s presently Norway’s finance minister and a former prime minister of the Nordic nation, writes.
“Nonetheless, the [US] administration’s views on safety coverage and NATO cooperation are recognizable. China continues to be thought-about the USA’ most essential challenger and strategic competitor; the pivot in direction of the Indo-Pacific area is ongoing and intensifying. Calls for that Europe and Canada spend extra on their protection are removed from new.”
However Stoltenberg’s recollections of conferences with senior officers forward of and through Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 provide among the most revealing insights.
Prelude To Warfare
His account of the run-up to the assault particulars Russia’s lack of curiosity in real talks, specifically a gathering in New York in September 2021 by which Russian Overseas Minister Sergei Lavrov was always interrupting him whereas his spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, “groaned and rolled her eyes” each time Stoltenberg spoke.
In mid-October 2021, he writes, a NATO intelligence officer advised him that Russia meant “to invade.” The explanation, he believes, was concern of the “political risk” posed by a “democratic and ever extra West-facing Ukraine.”
Stoltenberg additionally describes how Russian President Vladimir Putin modified, turning into more and more remoted — significantly throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
This account tallies with that given by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel in her memoirs, launched earlier this 12 months, the place she says Putin didn’t come to the G20 summit in 2021 as a result of he was afraid of catching the virus. She has mentioned this isolation could have been among the many foremost components behind Putin’s cause to invade.
Regardless of this, Stoltenberg writes, key NATO nations France and Germany had been in denial, simply as that they had been when Russian troops seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
“Each events illustrated the deep disagreement amongst NATO nations of their views of Russia,” he writes. These divergent views happen repeatedly because the narrative progresses.
Woken By Warfare
Full-scale conflict in Europe, the biggest since World Warfare II, started for Stoltenberg with a 4:25 a.m. cellphone name. Shortly afterwards, US Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin voiced concern about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, telling Stoltenberg: “We concern for his life.”
4 days later, Stoltenberg lastly obtained on the road to Zelenskyy, who repeatedly requested a NATO-imposed no-fly zone. The request was denied. “The dialog,” notes Stoltenberg, “was painful.”
Later, he writes that there had been a “widespread notion” in NATO that Kyiv would fall inside days.
NATO nations did impose wide-ranging financial sanctions and started transport arms, in addition to offering Ukraine with financial and humanitarian help. Thousands and thousands of Ukrainian refugees acquired sanctuary in Western nations.
In keeping with the Kiel Institute, in Germany, European nations offered 177 billion euros ($206.4 billion) of help to Ukraine between January 2022 and August 2025, whereas the USA offered 115 billion euros over the identical interval.
Inside this, Washington is the largest provider of navy help, with some 64.6 billion euros price of arms and armaments. Germany is second, at 17.7 billion. Shipments have included Patriot missile-defense techniques, tanks, artillery, and fighter jets, in addition to British and French Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles.
However critics have lengthy argued that sufficient has not been completed and that the assistance offered has typically come too late. Stoltenberg agrees.
‘Passive And Defeatist’
Recalling preparations forward of the NATO summit in July 2024, he writes “there was one thing passive and defeatist about our companions in Washington. They risked little, they didn’t take the offensive, they usually hid away their president.”
Stoltenberg says that then-US President Joe Biden was deterred from making choices by his considerations about what “the opposite man” would say, referring to Trump.
“But it surely wasn’t simply the US which was letting Ukraine down,” he writes. “The EU had promised to supply Ukraine with 1,000,000 artillery shells from March 2023 to March 2024, however lower than half had been delivered.”
Russia, backed by China economically and North Korea militarily, had extra sources than Ukraine in a conflict of attrition, Stoltenberg writes. But some NATO nations, as a substitute of tipping the stability, “merely provided the naked minimal of assist.”
It’s simply over a 12 months since Stoltenberg stepped down as NATO chief. In February, the 66-year-old took a brand new place as finance minister in his native Norway.
Talking on the Frankfurt E-book Truthful on October 17, he mentioned NATO nations had been nonetheless giving “too little, too slowly.”
This, he mentioned, has a direct hyperlink to a deliberate assembly in Budapest between Trump and Putin.
“We now have to speak to the Russians. However if you speak to the Russians it must be primarily based on power…they must know that we’re supporting the Ukrainians. The stronger they’re on the battlefield, the stronger their hand can be on the negotiating desk,” he added.
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