A summit of the Bucharest Nine (B9) – the countries of NATO’s eastern flank: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia – was held in Warsaw on Wednesday in the presence of US President Joe Biden and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. The purpose of the talks was to prepare for the July summit in Vilnius. 

Opening the meeting, President Andrzej Duda noted that it was taking place almost exactly on the anniversary of an event that changed the history of our part of Europe forever and which has an impact on the security situation worldwide.

In his speech, the US President declared that Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty is a sacred commitment that the United States has made. 

“I want to reaffirm that Article 5 is a sacred, inviolable article signed by NATO that signifies a commitment to every nation, every NATO state. We will defend every inch of NATO territory”, President Biden asserted.

During his opening remarks, the US president recalled that years ago, as a senator, he had pushed for NATO enlargement to enlarge the zone of stability. 

“Ironically, one of the last conversations we had with our friend in Russia was that I said: you keep applying for the finlandisation of NATO, but you will see the NATO-isation of Finland, and that is becoming a reality,” he said, referring to Finland’s application to join the Alliance.

The American president added that the B9 was established in 2015, so a year after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. – And now we are approaching the first anniversary of another Russian aggression and we are increasingly unified and in solidarity. We are committed to mutual and collective defence with a view, by the way, not only to Ukraine, but to democracy, security and peace around the world”, stressed Biden and said that he had also discussed this with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński