An extraordinary meeting of the North Atlantic Council (NAC) at the level of Ministers of Foreign Affairs will take place at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels on Friday, the Alliance announced in a statement.

“The meeting will be in person and will be chaired by the NATO Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg. The Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Finland and Sweden, as well as the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign And Security Policy, will take part,” the statement said.

For the first time in its history, NATO activated its NATO Response Force (NRF) in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We have activated NATO’s defense plans to prepare ourselves to respond to a range of contingencies and secure Alliance territory, including by drawing on our response forces. We are now making significant additional defensive deployments of forces to the eastern part of the Alliance,” NATO heads of state and government said in a joint statement issued on Friday after the Alliance held a virtual summit. (ILKHA)