BERLIN — Romania’s Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu urged German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday to further boost NATO’s eastern flank by sending over German troops to his country “soon” and “permanently.”
“I hope that soon we will have German soldiers permanently on the territory of Romania,” Ciolacu said, referring to a German announcement last week to permanently send 4,000 troops to Lithuania, while speaking at a joint press conference following a meeting between the two leaders in Berlin.
Ciolacu raised concerns Russia’s war in Ukraine may last longer and said, in a reply to a question about the NATO military alliance summit in Vilnius in two weeks, he expected the German government to deploy more troops to the east.
He later added: “I hope that together with the chancellor we can make decisions in this regard as soon as possible.”
Scholz didn’t immediately react to the Romanian demand. That Ciolacu raised it publicly appeared to come as a surprise to the chancellor, who has not communicated plans to send troops to Romania.
NATO stationed troops from countries including France in Romania, which has a direct border with Ukraine. The U.S. has said that it will keep its troops in Romania until at least this fall.
Both leaders expressed pessimism about the possibility of the war in Ukraine ending soon. “We probably would have expected the conflict to end with [the Ukrainian counteroffensive],” Ciolacu said. “But unfortunately … the publicly available data does not give us that much courage on that.”
Scholz said it was never to be expected the Ukrainian side would make rapid advances from one day to the next, saying: “The moment when a major breakthrough is achieved should not come so quickly.”
The chancellor also sought to dim Ukraine’s hope of getting a clear perspective for NATO membership at the Vilnius summit, which would instead focus on “deepening cooperation” with Kyiv through “a joint council.”
“Certainly, we will also discuss the question of how to further deal with the perspective of countries that look to NATO and want to join it,” Scholz said. “But it is also clear that no one can become a member of a defense alliance during a war.”
