NATO has branded Russia the biggest "direct threat" to Western security after its invasion of Ukraine and agreed on plans to modernise Kyiv's beleaguered armed forces, saying it stood fully behind Ukrainians' "heroic defence of their country".
At a summit dominated by the invasion and the geopolitical upheaval it has caused, NATO on Wednesday also invited and pledged a seven-fold increase from 2023 in combat forces on high alert along its eastern flank against any future Russian attack.
United States President Joe Biden announced more land, sea and air force deployments across Europe from Spain in the west to Romania and Poland bordering Ukraine, including a permanent army headquarters with an accompanying battalion in Poland - the first full-time US deployment on NATO's eastern fringes.
"President (Vladimir) Putin's war against Ukraine has shattered peace in Europe and has created the biggest security crisis in Europe since the Second World War," NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a news conference. "NATO has responded with strength and unity," he said.
As the 30 national NATO leaders were meeting in Madrid, , including missile strikes and shelling on the southern Mykolaiv region close to front lines and the Black Sea.
Ukraine also carried out its biggest exchange of prisoners of war since Russia invaded, securing the release of 144 of its soldiers, including 95 who defended Mariupol's steelworks, Ukraine's military intelligence agency said.
The top US intelligence officer said on Wednesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wants to seize most of Ukraine, but his forces are so degraded by combat that they likely can only achieve incremental gains in the near term.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, outlining the current US intelligence assessment of the more than four-month war, said that the consensus of US spy agencies is that it will grind on "for an extended period of time."
"In short, the picture remains pretty grim and Russia's attitude toward the West is hardening," Ms Haines told a Commerce Department conference.
The mayor of Mykolaiv city said a Russian missile had killed at least five people in a residential building there, while Moscow said its forces had hit what it called a training base for foreign mercenaries in the region.
The governor of eastern Luhansk province reported "fighting everywhere" in a battle around the hilltop city of Lysychansk, which Russian forces are trying to encircle as they gradually advance in a campaign to conquer all of Ukraine's industrialised eastern Donbas region on behalf of separatist proxies.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated to NATO leaders that Kyiv needed more weapons and money, and faster, to erode Russia's huge edge in artillery and missile firepower, and warned that the Kremlin's ambitions did not stop at Ukraine.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba praised NATO's "clear-eyed stance" on Russia and said the summit outcome proved "it can take difficult but essential decisions".
He added: "An equally strong and active position on Ukraine will help to protect Euro-Atlantic security and stability."
Kyiv has voiced concern that the West has been slow to offer it more than moral support against an invasion that has devastated cities, killed thousands and sent millions fleeing.
Russia says it is pursuing a "special military operation" in Ukraine to rid it of dangerous nationalists. Ukraine and the West accuse Russia of an unprovoked, imperial-style land grab.
'Full solidarity'
A NATO communique called Russia the "most significant and direct threat to the allies' security", a nod to the precipitous deterioration in relations with Russia - earlier classified as a "strategic partner" - since the invasion.
NATO issued a new Strategic Concept document, its first since 2010, that said a "strong independent Ukraine is vital for the stability of the Euro-Atlantic area".
To that end, NATO agreed a long-term financial and military aid package to modernise Ukraine's largely Soviet-era military.
"We stand in full solidarity with the government and the people of Ukraine in the heroic defence of their country," the communique said.
The US-led alliance said it would also deploy more "robust in-place combat-ready forces" on its eastern flank, scaled up from existing battlegroups to brigade-size units.
Mr Stoltenberg said NATO had agreed to put 300,000 troops on high readiness from 2023, up from 40,000 now, under a new force model to protect an area stretching from the Baltic to the Black seas.
Rescuers removing rubble after a Russian missile attack on a school, Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine, on 28 June, 2022. Source: AAP, Press Association / Madiyevskyy Vyacheslav/Ukrinform
"This is not a war being waged by Russia against only Ukraine. This is a war for the right to dictate conditions in Europe - for what the future world order will be like," he said.
NATO's invitation to Sweden and Finland to join the alliance marks one of the most momentous shifts in European security in decades as Helsinki and Stockholm drop a tradition of neutrality in response to Russia's invasion.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said NATO's expansion was "destabilising" and would not improve its members' security.
Mr Zelenskyy this week told Mr Biden and other G7 leaders that he wants the war over by the end of the year.
But Ms Haines' comments suggested that the billions of dollars in modern arms being supplied by the United States and other countries to Mr Zelenskyy's forces may not give them the ability to turn the tide against Russia any time soon.
She said that Mr Putin remains intent on overruning most of Ukraine even though Ukrainian forces beat back Russia's attempt to capture the capital Kyiv in February, forcing Moscow to reduce its target to seizing the entire eastern Donbas region.
"We think he has effectively the same political goals that we had previously, which is to say that he wants to take most of Ukraine," Ms Haines said.
Russian forces, however, have been so degraded by more than four months of combat that it is unlikely they can achieve Putin's goal any time soon, Ms Haines said in her first public assessment of the war since May.
"We perceive a disconnect between Putin's near-term military objectives in this area and his military's capacity, a kind of mismatch between his ambitions and what the military is able to accomplish," she said.
Mr Putin's priority now, she said, is making gains in the Donbas region and collapsing Ukrainian forces, a development that Russia assesses will "cause the resistance from within to slump."
