The envoys to India of nine Eastern European countries called Bucharest Nine jointly wrote to acquaint the Indian public with the basic facts on the ground” about the “premeditated, unprovoked and unjustified Russian aggression in Ukraine”.

What is Bucharest Nine?

• The “Bucharest Nine” is a group of nine NATO countries in Eastern Europe that became part of the US-led military alliance after the end of the Cold War.
• The Bucharest Nine or Bucharest Format, often abbreviated as the B9, was founded on November 4, 2015, and takes its name from Bucharest, the capital of Romania.
• The group was created on the initiative of Klaus Iohannis, who has been President of Romania since 2014, and Andrzej Duda, who became President of Poland in August 2015.

Composition

• The B9 are, apart from Romania and Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
• All members of the B9 are part of the European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
• All nine countries were once closely associated with the now dissolved Soviet Union, but later chose the path of democracy.
• Romania, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria are former signatories of the now-dissolved Warsaw Pact military alliance led by the Soviet Union.
• The other Warsaw Pact countries were the erstwhile Czechoslovakia and East Germany, and Albania. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were part of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Functions of B9

• The B9 offers a platform for deepening the dialogue and consultation among the participant allied states, in order to articulate their specific contribution to the ongoing processes across the North-Atlantic Alliance.
• It works in total compliance with the principles of solidarity and indivisibility of the security of the NATO Member States.

Opposition to Russian expansion

• The B9 countries have been critical of President Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine since 2014, when the war in the Donbas started and Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula.
• After the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the B9 met in Warsaw.
• Ukraine’s President has also appealed to the B9 for defense aid, sanctions, pressure on the aggressor Russia and create one anti-war coalition.

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