Biden brings more troops and sanctions to NATO amid rising fears of

WASHINGTON —  President Joe Biden landed in Brussels on Wednesday for urgent meetings this week with members of NATO, the G-7 and the European Union as the continent reels from Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine that’s shattered 70 years of relative peace and security in the region. 

As the Kremlin wages its medieval siege war inside Ukraine, just outside the border, more than 35 countries have come together to help tip the scales in favor of Kyiv — the largest voluntary coalition in the history of modern warfare. Missiles, helicopters, Humvees, ammunition, body armor, intelligence reports, money and humanitarian aid are all flowing into Ukraine, where they are having a tangible impact on the course of the conflict.

Thursday’s meetings in Brussels will bring together the world’s most powerful military alliance for an “extraordinary summit” where leaders will decide on troops, sanctions and other measures designed to aid war-torn Ukraine and to bring Russian President Vladimir Putin to his knees.

Three pressing threats loom large over the summit, requiring the alliance to figure out its response and whether military intervention would be needed: mistaken fire on an allied nation, cyber attacks to critical infrastructure of a NATO member state and the possibility of chemical or biological warfare within Ukraine, according to experts. 

NATO leaders are also expected to announce more humanitarian aid to Ukraine, particularly the embattled port city of Mariupol, a fresh round of sanctions and new pressure on Moscow’s energy sector.

As the war nears its second month and Russia’s battle deaths soar past 7,000 with almost nothing to show for them, experts say it’s becoming inevitable that Moscow will try new ways to hit back at Kyiv and its backers — both within Ukraine and beyond its frontiers.

Inside Ukraine, the possibility that a desperate Putin could resort to weapons of mass destruction is one of the things that keeps security experts up at night. So does the prospect of a deadlier repeat of last month’s indiscriminate Russian attack on the nuclear reactors at Chornobyl and Zaporizhzhia, where soldiers fired at a reactor that was thankfully offline. 

If Russia had fired on one of the reactors that happened to be online, “that would have caused a nuclear disaster, and we’d basically be looking at trying to evacuate a quarter of Europe — maybe a half of Europe — depending on the wind,” said Scheherazade Rehman, director of the…