That prospect is why Ukraine's NATO allies must continue supporting Kyiv militarily, Stoltenberg stressed.
"If Putin wins in Ukraine, there is real risk that his aggression will not end there. Our support is not charity. It is an investment in our security," he said.
"The only way to reach a just and lasting solution is to convince President Putin that they will not win on the battlefield," Stoltenberg continued.
"And the only way to ensure that President Putin realises that he is not winning on the battlefield is to continue to support Ukraine."
The NATO secretary general's comments came as support for further aid to Ukraine faltered in the United States and the European Union as a result of internal political manoeuvring.
Opposition Republicans in the United States have opposed to providing more US military aid, while in the EU, Hungary has held up approval of a 50-billion-euro ($55-billion) package to stabilise Ukraine's war-hit finances over the next three years.
EU leaders were gathered in Brussels on Thursday for a summit at which aid to Kyiv and Ukraine's bid to one day join the bloc were the headline issues.
Stoltenberg's warning also came at the same moment Putin said his troops were progressing along most of the front line in Ukraine.
"The situation of our troops is improving throughout," Putin asserted during a Moscow press conference.
Despite receiving weapons and ammunition from its allies, Ukraine has been unable over the past few months to make significant breakthroughs against entrenched Russian positions.
Putin says 617,000 Russian servicemen deployed in Ukraine
Moscow (AFP) Dec 14, 2023 -
President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russian had deployed more than 600,000 military personnel in Ukraine, nearly two years after he ordered his troops to capture the capital Kyiv.
Kyiv and Moscow are believed to have suffered massive casualties after months of large-scale hostilities and the United States believes some 315,000 Russian soldiers have either been killed or wounded.
"The front line is over 2,000 kilometres (1,242 miles) long. There are 617,000 people in the conflict zone," Putin said during his first end-of-year press conference since sending his army into Ukraine in February 2022.
He added that some 244,000 mobilised troops were currently stationed in territories in Ukraine that are controlled by Russian forces.
Putin made the comments during his end-of-year press conference, where he said that there were no immediate plans to introduce a fresh round of mobilisation of Russian men for the conflict.
Vladimir Putin warns Ukraine war will continue until Kyiv capitulates
Washington DC (UPI) Dec 14, 2023 -
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that his plan for the war in Ukraine was unchanged and that the conflict would end only after Moscow's aims were realized.
Speaking in an annual address to the Russian public, his first major news conference since Russia's forces full-scale invasion almost two years ago, Putin said there would be peace when his Ukraine objectives of "denazification, demilitarization and its neutral status," were achieved.
"These objectives do not change," he said.
"If they don't want to come to an agreement, then we are forced to take other measures, including military ones. Or we will agree on certain terms," he said at the carefully stage-managed event which was combined with a public phone-in.
Putin claimed the sides reached an agreement in talks in Istanbul in March 2022, which was then scrapped -- Kyiv disputes there was ever any deal -- and re-iterated that there were only two possible outcomes to the conflict: come to deal, or resolve it by force.
"This is what we will strive for," Putin said.
He said Russia's economy was performing strongly despite the demands being made on it by his so-called "special military operation," claiming Russian forces held front-line superiority all across the front line.
However, he did reveal that a total of 617,000 troops were mobilized in Ukraine and that 300,000 men were drafted last year in addition to 486,000 "contract" soldiers -- but did not talk about casualties, estimated by the United States at 315,000.
Warning that Russian sovereignty was inviolate, Putin said NATO was responsible for the war and the widening rift between his country and the Western world by threatening Russia's territorial integrity.
"The unbridled desire to creep towards our borders, taking Ukraine into NATO, all this led to this tragedy. Plus the bloody events in Donbas for eight years -- all this led to the tragedy that we are now experiencing. They forced us into these actions," he said.
"What the United States conceived and organized, Europe stands and silently watches, or plays and sings along with them there. Well how can we build relations with them?" Putin opined.
He said the conditions for restoring "fully fledged" ties would only come with internal U.S. change resulting in it "respecting other people and other countries."
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