Stoltenberg said NATO cannot permanently protect its entire infrastructure

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg admitted that the military alliance is unable ‘to protect every metre of its critical infrastructure on an ongoing basis’, therefore it relies on intelligence and plans to conduct more exercises, RIA Novosti reports

photo: www.reuters.com

Stoltenberg and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen visited the platform at the Troll field in Norway on March 17th.

“Keeping in mind that we are not able to protect every metre of this infrastructure all the time, we constantly exchange intelligence information, monitor the situation on the infrastructure more carefully, we have strengthened our presence [in the North and Baltic Seas] with greater military capabilities. We also plan to conduct more drills in order to be able to respond quickly if something happens,” Stoltenberg explained.

The day before, NATO and the EU held a meeting of the task force for resilient critical infrastructure. The decision to establish the task force was made on January 11th after the terrorist attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines. As Head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said, within the framework of this task force, threats to critical infrastructure will be identified, key principles for increasing its security will be developed, and appropriate measures will be proposed.