Spain is sending warships to beef up NATO naval forces in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean and is mulling sending fighter jets to Bulgaria in an attempt to deter Russian aggression, reports said Friday.
Spain is sending the warships earlier than planned for a NATO exercise, Defense Minister Margarita Robles said.
Robles pointed out that Spain prefers the use of diplomacy to resolve the conflict between the two countries.
"Russia cannot tell any country what they should do and NATO will defend any country that wants to join the alliance," she added.
A mine-sweeper is already on its way and a frigate will cruise within three or four days, Robles told journalists.
Spain's preference was for an "exclusively diplomatic response" to resolving the conflict, she added.
Spain's participation in the NATO military deployment in eastern Europe comes after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares discussed a coordinated response to the threat to Ukraine from Russia at a meeting in Washington on Wednesday.
The Spanish vessels set sail in the face of increasing frictions over Russia's 100,000-strong military buildup near its border with Ukraine and warnings from the west that Moscow may soon invade the former Soviet nation.
The military pact, on the other hand, has rejected Russia's demands that it not extend further east, which the Kremlin has used as an alibi to build up its forces and raise undefined security concerns.
Western analysts and nations are now fearing that Russia may soon carry out a military action into Ukraine, similar to its annexation of the Crimea Peninsula in 2014.
Russia has rejected the claims that it is planning an assault but said it could launch unspecified military move if a list of demands are not met, including a guarantee from NATO never to accept Ukraine as an ally.
Western and former officials told Reuters that NATO, which was founded in 1949 to counter the Soviet military threat, was forced to contemplate reinforcements that contradicted Putin's insistence that the alliance not advance to the east.
At his Wednesday news conference, U.S. President Joe Biden said he expected Russian President Vladimir Putin to launch some kind of action, and appeared to suggest the U.S. and its allies might disagree over the response if Moscow stopped short of a major invasion.
After Biden's statements on Wednesday, his administration and allies went into quick damage control assessment, putting a strong emphasis on solidarity.
