How Russia's war against Ukraine awakened NATO and how the Alliance is changing
Strengthening NATO and "decisive support" for Ukraine are the key messages of the Alliance’s 2025 report presented on Thursday, 26 March, by Secretary General Mark Rutte.
European Pravda carefully reviewed the new 74-page report by Rutte, as well as all previous reports by NATO secretaries general starting from 2013 before Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, when Russia and NATO were still building a "new phase of relations".
Read more about how the Alliance is changing in the article by Tetiana Vysotska, a European Pravda correspondent in Brussels: 12 years of NATO’s awakening: How attitudes towards Russia changed, but not towards Ukraine’s membership.
"Russia remains the most significant and direct threat to our security and to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area," the preface to the 2025 report states.
Throughout the year, Russia whose war of aggression against Ukraine is supported by China, North Korea, Iran and Belarus "continued to test the Alliance, becoming more reckless, including with airspace violations, sabotage and malign cyber activities."
NATO’s response to Russian provocations was "swift, clear and decisive", Secretary General Mark Rutte emphasises in the 2025 report. The Alliance now has more forces ready to respond on land, at sea and in the air.
"We reaffirmed our strong support for Ukraine and throughout 2025, NATO and Allies continued to step up," the Secretary General stressed.
According to Rutte, long-term NATO support means Ukraine can defend itself today, be in a strong position to secure a just and lasting peace, and be capable of deterring any future Russian aggression.
However, this wording, correct from the perspective of Ukraine’s geopolitical interests, appeared only recently. Before Russia invaded Donbas and annexed Crimea, NATO secretaries general issued very different reports.
In 2013, under Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Alliance operated in a paradigm focused on overcoming the global economic crisis and seemed not to see a major threat from the East.
The situation changed just a year later. The 2014 report, the first by new Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, clearly showed that Russia’s invasion of Donbas and annexation of Crimea were a cold shower for the Alliance and the first step towards strategic awakening.
Even then, however, Russia was still seen more as a rule-breaker that could be brought back to the negotiating table. In the following years, up until the full-scale aggression, NATO gradually adapted to reality, but clearly lagged behind the pace of growing threats from the East.
In 2021, Russia unilaterally effectively ended dialogue with NATO, and the unprecedentedly brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine finally buried the concept of "dual track" (deterrence plus dialogue) in NATO’s approach to Moscow.
This also affected the tone of Secretary General Stoltenberg’s reports in 2022–2023. The search for dialogue with Russia finally stopped. In the new Strategic Concept adopted at the Madrid Summit in 2022, NATO defined Russia as "the most significant and direct threat" to Allied security, as well as to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic region.
Regarding assistance to Ukraine, after some chaos in 2022, support from NATO countries in 2023 shifted towards the transfer of heavy weapons. However, these processes took place on a bilateral basis or through the Ramstein format.
NATO as an organisation limited itself to non-lethal assistance, and only in 2024, with Mark Rutte beginning his term as Secretary General, did a truly tectonic shift occur: the Alliance began providing support directly through its own structures.
In 2025, the Alliance started acting even more proactively.