Former NATO Secretary General: Alliance Will Not Start World War III Over Ukraine

According to TASS news agency on November 9, former NATO Secretary General (2014-2024), Norwegian Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg believes that the North Atlantic Alliance will not launch a third world war with Russia over Ukraine.

According to Mr. Stoltenberg, in a conversation with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in February 2022, he ruled out the possibility of establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine because of the risk of the conflict escalating into war with Russia.

"He called me from a bunker in Kiev, near which there were Russian tanks. And Mr. Zelensky said: 'I understand that you will not send NATO ground troops, although I would not agree either. But please close the airspace. Do not let Russian planes, drones and helicopters fly and attack us,'" Mr. Stoltenberg recounted in an interview with the British weekly The Sunday Times.

Then-NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg replied that this would not happen, because in the opposite case, NATO would first "have to neutralize Russian air defense systems in Belarus and Russia."

"And if there was a Russian plane or helicopter in the air, we would have to shoot it down, and then we would find ourselves in a state of full-scale war between NATO and Russia. And we don't want to do that. As Joe Biden, the US President at the time, said, we will not risk a third world war for the sake of Ukraine," Stoltenberg explained.

"Our goal is not to have Pearl Harbor and find ourselves in a situation where the entire alliance is involved in the conflict. Therefore, we continue to help Ukraine so that they can fight, but we do not want to send NATO troops and directly engage in a military conflict with Russia. I continue to believe that this is the right approach," said former NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg.