The narrative battle between Russia and the West continues with the U.S. President Joe Biden meeting with the leaders of the Bucharest Nine during the bloc’s extraordinary summit on Wednesday, February 22, in Warsaw. The agenda includes more U.S. troops in the region and more weapons for Ukraine.
President Biden traveled back to the Polish capital after briefly visiting Kyiv earlier this week, to deliver a historic speech on Tuesday, the same day Putin held his state of the union address and announced Russia’s temporary pull-back from the last remaining nuclear arms treaty.
The Bucharest Nine (or B9) make up the eastern flank of NATO and include those members of the Atlantic community who are closest to the fire, but also some of the most—and least—enthusiastic supporters of the West’s policies regarding support of Ukraine.
The B9 group constitutes a regional platform for intergovernmental cooperation between former Warsaw Pact members and post-Soviet states, who all joined NATO after the dissolution of the Soviet Union—including the three Baltic states, the four Visegrad countries, as well as Romania and Bulgaria. It was created in 2015 at the joint initiative of Romania and Poland to address the security challenges from Russia after its annexation of Crimea in 2014.
This occasion marks the seventh time B9 heads of state have convened for a summit in the past eight years, and the third time since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February. Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s Secretary General was also present at the meeting.
“What we wish to do today,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said in his opening speech, “is to think together among [our] closest allies about our next steps in the run-up to the B9 Summit in Bratislava and the NATO Summit in Vilnius, and about the possibilities to provide further support to Ukraine.”
President Klaus Iohannis of Romania, the summit’s other co-host, said the Bucharest Nine looks forward to “increased U.S. military presence” and the “preparation for a U.S. strategy for the Black Sea,” welcoming the participation of President Biden. “We also strongly support Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic perspective,” he added to the agenda as part of a broader future strategy of deterrence to make sure the ongoing war is “Russia’s final act.”
President Biden did not have much to say about any concrete initiatives during the public part of the summit; nonetheless, he reassured the B9 of the United States’ continuous commitment to defend its allies under any circumstances. To Washington, “Article 5 is a sacred commitment,” Biden stressed. “We will defend every inch of NATO.”
But the Bucharest Nine’s apparent unity on the Ukraine issue is more complicated than what meets the eye. While the discussion within the B9 is led by Ukraine’s most vocal supporters (including Poland, Romania, and the Baltic countries), some of NATO’s least enthusiastic and more realpolitik-oriented members also sit at the table, namely Hungary and Bulgaria.
Hungary’s more neutral, pro-peace position is well-known across Europe. The country, although strongly supporting Ukraine’s sovereignty, has not only been opposing the EU’s energy sanctions but has been consistently arguing against endlessly supplying Ukraine with Western arms shipments—and getting dragged into the conflict—and instead called for immediate peace negotiations. Similarly, the question of arming Ukraine is a complex and divisive issue in Bulgaria, whose newly appointed government would like to pursue a more cautious foreign policy than others in the B9.
Whatever the result of today’s meeting, it will need to take into account the group’s internal divisions and the will of each member state as well.
