NATO has taken over the coordination of Western military aid to Ukraine from the United States, as planned. This was reported by a source Reuters, reports UNN.
According to the publication, the move, taken after a delay of several months, gives NATO a more direct role in the war against a Russian invasion while keeping its own forces out of the war.
However, diplomats recognize that the NATO handover could have a limited effect, given that the U.S. under Trump could still hit Ukraine hard by reducing its support, as it is the alliance's dominant force and supplies most of the weapons to Kiev.
Trump, who will take office in January, has said he wants to end the war in Ukraine quickly. He has long criticized the scale of U.S. financial and military aid to Ukraine.
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The headquarters of the new NATO mission in Ukraine, dubbed NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU), is located at Clay Barracks, a U.S. base in Wiesbaden, Germany.
A person familiar with the situation told Reuters it was now fully operational. No public reason for the delays was given.
In the past, the U.S.-led Ramstein Group, an ad hoc coalition of some 50 countries named after the U.S. air base in Germany where it first met, has coordinated Western military supplies to Kiev.
Meanwhile, the outgoing administration in Washington is struggling to send as many weapons to Kiev as possible amid fears that Trump may cut military hardware shipments to Ukraine.
Trump threatened to pull out of NATO during his first term as president and demanded that allies spend 3 percent of national GDP on their militaries, compared to NATO's target of 2 percent.
The NSATU will have a total of about 700 personnel, including troops stationed at the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SHAPE) headquarters in Belgium and at logistic bases in Poland and Romania.