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Former NATO Chief Stoltenberg Says Alliance Let Ukraine Down, Washington Was ‘Defeatist’

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenky (Office of the President of Ukraine/Released)

This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.

Former NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg says the alliance “was letting Ukraine down” by failing to deliver enough support during 2023-24, describing a “defeatist” mood in Washington and European nations failing to make promised arms deliveries.

Stoltenberg, who was head of the western military alliance from October 2014 until October 2024, makes the criticisms in a new book, On My Watch, Leading NATO In A Time Of War, to be released on October 23.

The book covers his entire period in office, including NATO’s “defeat” in Afghanistan in 2021 and Russia’s initial aggression in Ukraine in 2014. It also ponders the future of the alliance following the election of Donald Trump as US president in 2024.

“The tone among the allies is sometimes sharp,” Stoltenberg, who is currently Norway’s finance minister and a former prime minister of the Nordic nation, writes.

“However, the [US] administration’s views on security policy and NATO cooperation are recognizable. China continues to be considered the United States’ most important challenger and strategic competitor; the pivot towards the Indo-Pacific region is ongoing and intensifying. Demands that Europe and Canada spend more on their defense are far from new.”

But Stoltenberg’s recollections of meetings with senior officials ahead of and during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 offer some of the most revealing insights.

Prelude To War

His account of the run-up to the attack details Russia’s lack of interest in genuine talks, in particular a meeting in New York in September 2021 in which Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was constantly interrupting him while his spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, “groaned and rolled her eyes” whenever Stoltenberg spoke.

In mid-October 2021, he writes, a NATO intelligence officer told him that Russia intended “to invade.” The reason, he believes, was fear of the “political threat” posed by a “democratic and ever more West-facing Ukraine.”

Stoltenberg also describes how Russian President Vladimir Putin changed, becoming increasingly isolated — particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This account tallies with that given by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel in her memoirs, released earlier this year, where she says Putin didn’t come to the G20 summit in 2021 because he was afraid of catching the virus. She has said this isolation may have been among the main factors behind Putin’s reason to invade.

Despite this, Stoltenberg writes, key NATO countries France and Germany were in denial, just as they had been when Russian troops seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

“Both occasions illustrated the deep disagreement among NATO nations in their views of Russia,” he writes. These divergent views occur repeatedly as the narrative progresses.

Woken By War

Full-scale war in Europe, the largest since World War II, began for Stoltenberg with a 4:25 a.m. phone call. Shortly afterwards, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin voiced concern about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, telling Stoltenberg: “We fear for his life.”

Four days later, Stoltenberg finally got on the line to Zelenskyy, who repeatedly requested a NATO-imposed no-fly zone. The request was denied. “The conversation,” notes Stoltenberg, “was painful.”

Later, he writes that there had been a “widespread perception” in NATO that Kyiv would fall within days.

NATO countries did impose wide-ranging economic sanctions and began shipping arms, as well as providing Ukraine with economic and humanitarian aid. Millions of Ukrainian refugees received sanctuary in Western countries.

According to the Kiel Institute, in Germany, European nations provided 177 billion euros ($206.4 billion) of aid to Ukraine between January 2022 and August 2025, while the United States provided 115 billion euros over the same period.

Within this, Washington is the biggest supplier of military aid, with some 64.6 billion euros worth of arms and armaments. Germany is second, at 17.7 billion. Shipments have included Patriot missile-defense systems, tanks, artillery, and fighter jets, as well as British and French Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles.

But critics have long argued that enough has not been done and that the help provided has often come too late. Stoltenberg agrees.

‘Passive And Defeatist’

Recalling preparations ahead of the NATO summit in July 2024, he writes “there was something passive and defeatist about our partners in Washington. They risked little, they failed to take the offensive, and they hid away their president.”

Stoltenberg says that then-US President Joe Biden was deterred from making decisions by his concerns about what “the other guy” would say, referring to Trump.

“But it wasn’t just the US which was letting Ukraine down,” he writes. “The EU had promised to provide Ukraine with a million artillery shells from March 2023 to March 2024, but less than half had been delivered.”

Russia, backed by China economically and North Korea militarily, had more resources than Ukraine in a war of attrition, Stoltenberg writes. Yet some NATO nations, instead of tipping the balance, “simply offered the bare minimum of support.”

It’s just over a year since Stoltenberg stepped down as NATO chief. In February, the 66-year-old took a new position as finance minister in his native Norway.

Speaking at the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 17, he said NATO countries were still giving “too little, too slowly.”

This, he said, has a direct link to a planned meeting in Budapest between Trump and Putin.

“We have to talk to the Russians. But when you talk to the Russians it has to be based on strength…they have to know that we are supporting the Ukrainians. The stronger they are on the battlefield, the stronger their hand will be at the negotiating table,” he added.