NATO to take "further military measures" over Ukraine crisis

BRUSSELS - NATO decided to take "further military measures" to respond to the crisis in Ukraine, the military alliance's Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said after the meeting of the North Atlantic Council on Wednesday.

Ukraine crisis

"Today, we agreed on a package of further military measures to reinforce our collective defence and demonstrate the strength of Allied solidarity," Rasmussen said.

"We will have more planes in the air, more ships on the water, and more readiness on the land," he added.

The NATO chief pointed to a series of military steps already implemented over Ukraine, including enhancing an air policing mission in the Baltic States and AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) surveillance flights over Poland and Romania.

"As future military measures require, the alliance's policing aircraft will fly more sorties over the Baltic region, ships will deploy to the Baltic Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean and elsewhere," Rasmussen said.

At the same time, he called on Russia to be part of the solution, and "to pull back its troops from the borders."

Rasmussen said these reinforced measures would start to be implemented "straight away," though he agreed that a political solution is "the only way forward."