British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, during a dinner with NATO foreign ministers in Brussels on Wednesday, said that “the era of engagement with Russia is over,” according to a statement issued by the British Foreign Office before the dinner.
In her remarks to her NATO counterparts, Truss said that “the founding act of NATO and Russia has expired and it is time to get rid of an outdated approach to dealing with Russia,” the State Department said.
According to the original document, the law, signed in 1997, states that “NATO and Russia do not consider one an adversary of the other.”
The era of engagement with Russia is over. We need a new approach to security in Europe based on resilience, defense and deterrence,” Truss said.
NATO meeting: Truss’s comments come as NATO foreign ministers meet in Brussels to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
According to the statement sent to CNN, Truss stressed that NATO cannot allow “security voids” on the alliance’s eastern borders, and that support for countries “trapped in the network of Russian influence” such as Georgia, Moldova, Sweden and Finland must be “rethinked”.
The secretary of state also urged her partners to tighten sanctions and arm Ukraine “quickly and decisively…to ensure Putin’s failure.”
Truss also said it was working with its G7 counterparts to impose further sanctions on more Russian banks, according to an article in the Telegraph on Wednesday. In the article, Truss advocated for increased NATO spending and presence in Eastern Europe.
“For NATO to remain at the forefront of global security, it must be bold. As President Eisenhower, the Alliance’s first commander in chief, said: ‘History has not long since handed over the care of freedom to the weak or the timid,'” the Secretary of State wrote.
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