To strengthen common defence and support Ukraine against the Russian invasion, there must be “a whole of society approach,” a top NATO military official said on Wednesday.

“The responsibility for freedom does not lie on the shoulders of those in uniform alone,” said the chairman of the NATO Military Committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, in Brussels.

Senior NATO military officials are discussing collective defence plans as well as progress in the Ukraine war in a two-day meeting at the Western military alliance’s headquarters.

Calling for a “warfighting transformation of NATO,” Bauer said the public and private sector need to change their thinking for “an era in which anything can happen at any time.”

“We need public and private actors to change their mindset from an era in which everything was plannable, foreseeable, controllable, and focused on efficiency,” he said.

Bauer added that Ukraine and NATO never posed a security threat to Russia and instead the war is “about Russia fearing something much more powerful than any physical weapon on Earth: Democracy.”

“If people in Ukraine can have democratic rights, then people in Russia will soon crave them too. That is what this war is actually about,” he said.

The committee is the highest military authority in NATO. It supports the decision-making processes of the civilian leadership in military matters. At the current meeting, an exchange with military officers from Ukraine was also planned as part of a NATO-Ukraine Council.