The leaders of nine Central and Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia), known as the Bucharest Nine, met in Slovakia’s capital, Bratislava, to discuss their common approach at the NATO summit scheduled for July 11–13 in Vilnius, Lithuania. The Bucharest Nine came together in response to Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, fearing that they could be Russia’s next territorial target.
The nine aimed for a more robust, multi-year, and comprehensive support package for Ukraine which will reinforce its defence capabilities by implementing NATO standards and increasing interoperability with NATO. They expect that, in Vilnius, they will upgrade their political relations with Ukraine to a new level and launch a new political track that will lead to Ukraine’s membership in NATO. NATO responded to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 by deploying multinational battlegroups in Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, complementing another four deployed in 2017 in the three Baltic states and Poland, to expand NATO’s presence from the Baltics to the Black Sea.
