NATO's eastern flank countries gather in Riga ahead of crucial July summit

The Bucharest Nine (B9) group was created in the wake of Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Transcript

00:00NATO's eastern flank countries, also known as the Bucharest Nine, have gathered in Latvia's

00:08capital Riga, ahead of the crucial July NATO Summit in Washington.

00:14The Bucharest Nine event features officials and leaders from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic,

00:20Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, plus NATO's newcomers,

00:26Sweden and Finland, as well as its Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg.

00:32The head of the alliance will leave his post in October and has been increasing calls to

00:37support Ukraine in the past few months.

00:40On Wednesday, he is going to be in Hungary to meet Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has

00:46so far denied any military assistance to Ukraine.

00:51Countering Russia's threats to NATO is top of the agenda of the B-9 meeting.

00:57The ongoing illegal war of aggression against Ukraine reminds us on a daily basis that

01:03Russia is ready to use all available forces and means, including the military ones, to

01:10achieve its near-imperial goals.

01:16While we are meeting here in Riga, the Polish border with Belarus is seeing once again the

01:22weaponization of migration, with the use of illegal migration pressure, artificially introduced

01:30by Kremlin as part of the hybrid operation.

01:34We are aware that the same tools are being used right now against other states from our

01:40region.

01:42Ukraine's potential NATO membership is another issue that might be discussed in Riga.

01:48However, B-9 hosts Latvia reportedly rule out that an invitation could be extended in

01:56July.