LONDON, June 18. /TASS/. Ensuring unhindered long-term military and economic assistance to Kiev will help bring the Ukrainian conflict to an end as soon as possible, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told the BBC.

"We need to do whatever we can <…> to pledge more long-term support to Ukraine," he said. "The stronger our support for Ukraine, the sooner the war can end," the NATO chief pointed out.

Stoltenberg had earlier told The Daily Telegraph that the alliance had begun consultations on putting nuclear missiles on alert. He stressed that NATO remains a nuclear alliance that sees threats from Russia, China and North Korea. The Kremlin spokesman said these statements were "nothing else but an escalation."

"This is nothing new. NATO has had nuclear deterrence since we were founded and we are transparent about this, so there are no changes," Stoltenberg emphasized. He claimed that it wasn’t an escalation, "not at all." At the same time, he accused Russia of allegedly "escalating by having a lot of dangerous nuclear rhetoric, but also by actually threatening to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine." "Nuclear weapons shall never be used and a nuclear war shall never be fought and cannot be won," he said.