MADRID — President Joe Biden said Thursday that the NATO alliance is stronger than it has ever been and reaffirmed U.S. support for Ukraine for "as long as it takes" as he wrapped up a series of meetings with leaders here.
“We set down a marker of unity, determination and deep capabilities of the democratic nations of the world to do what needs to be done,” Biden told reporters at a news conference following a three-day NATO summit. “Putin thought he could break the transatlantic alliance. He tried to weaken us. He expected our resolve to fracture, but he is getting exactly what he did not want.”
Despite tensions on a number of fronts among the 30 NATO members, there were few public signs of friction at the three-day meeting. Biden aided in getting one contentious issue off the table before he arrived Tuesday, helping to urge Turkey to sign off on Finland’s and Sweden’s requests to become NATO members.
But Biden warned that Americans should expect to face the consequences of the conflict, such as high gas and food prices, until Russia withdraws its troops from Ukraine.
Biden will return to Washington for a little more than a week before he heads back overseas for a trip to the Middle East, including stops in Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Biden emphasized that during that Middle East trip he wouldn't be asking the Saudi government to increase their production of oil, a move that could help drive down the global price of energy. Biden said instead he would be focused on wider issues in the Middle East, like the war in Yemen.
One action that Biden and other world leaders could take to lower oil prices would be imposing a price cap on Russian oil imports, something on which he said the Group of Seven leaders would continue to work.
Biden took several steps on the trip to show the U.S. was ramping up both its support for Ukraine and its defenses across Europe.
In the latest package of military assistance to Ukraine, Biden said Thursday that the U.S. would be sending $800 million in additional military equipment to Ukraine, including new advanced air defense systems, more artillery and ammunition, and counter-battery radars.
The president said during the NATO summit that the U.S. would deploy additional troops to Romania on a rotating basis and enhance other rotational deployments in the Baltic states. He also said the U.S. would maintain a permanent headquarters for the Army’s V Corps in Poland, a move that was originally planned by the Trump administration.
The U.S. also plans to send two F-35 squadrons to the United Kingdom, stage additional air defense and other capabilities in Germany and Italy, and build up naval operations in Spain, increasing the number of destroyers stationed there from four to six.
Ahead of the NATO summit, Biden spent three days meeting with the G-7 leaders in the Bavarian Alps, where conversation mainly focused on ways to shore up support for Ukraine and punish Russia.
The group, which collectively accounts for half of the world's economy, agreed to ban imports of Russian gold, enact a new round of sanctions targeting Russia's military supply chain and continue working on a mechanism to set a price cap on Russian oil imports.
