Expert: Russia must accept reality of NATO’s 32 member countries

Jim Stokes, a senior expert with GLOBSEC’s “Future of Security” program and former director of nuclear policy at NATO (2023–2025), said this in an interview with Ukrinform . “Russia will therefore have to accept the reality: NATO now has 32 members. Russia can continue talking about this, and NATO can simply respond: “Noted. We are not going to change,” Stokes said in response to a question about whether the Alliance would be willing to agree to the Kremlin’s demands to roll back its military presence to pre-1997 levels. According to the expert, this seems “absolutely impossible.” He was referring to the new members—Finland and Sweden—not to mention the 16 countries that joined after the end of the Cold War.