Former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen Hired as Zelensky's Adviser

After his career as NATO Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen launched a political consultancy of his own, among others, becoming an adviser to Ukraine's previous president Petro Poroshenko.

Former Danish Prime Minister and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has adopted a new role of top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

In his new capacity, he visited the Ukrainian city of Irpen before joining Zelensky himself in Kiev as a member of a group of international experts who will advise the Ukrainian leader on “security guarantees” for his country.

The group Fogh Rasmuseen currently co-chairs, consists of a number of international experts from global politics, foreign policy, diplomacy and academia from across the political spectrum. Other members include former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt.

On Twitter, Fogh Rasmussen said it was an “honor” to meet Zelensky, stressing that his group discussed “what more the democratic world must to support Ukraine”.

“The group's task is to look at how we can give Ukraine sufficient security guarantees in the time until they may in the future become members of NATO”, Anders Fogh Rasmussen told TV2. “Ukraine still has that ambition, but our task is to discuss what we can do here and now to secure Ukraine”, he added.

In a press release in connection with Rasmussen's new mission, the working group said it would examine how Ukraine's partners can help “strengthen and rebuild Ukraine's armed forces” to “avoid future aggression”. At the same time, Anders Fogh Rasmussen emphasised that no commitments from other countries can “replace Ukraine's own, strong defense capabilities”.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen left his post of Danish prime minister in 2009 to become Secretary General of NATO. After leaving his post in 2014 with a questionable legacy that includes the wide-reaching bombing campaign of Libya in 2011 that plunged the country into an ongoing civil war, and has since worked as a political consultant at Rasmussen Global.

This is not the first time Fogh Rasmussen assists a Ukrainian president. In 2016, Fogh was hired by then-President Petro Poroshenko as an adviser.

Over the years, Fogh Rasmussen has made copious anti-Russian statements, among others calling it a “strategic adversary”, and claimed Russia would “invade” the Baltic States and beyond unless it is somehow “stopped” by NATO. Furthermore, Fogh Rasmussen also ventured that the West made a “mistake” in not providing Georgia and Ukraine with a clear path to NATO membership. Regarding the present conflict in Ukraine, Rasmussen suggested that the West “cannot let Russia win”.

On 24 February Russia launched a special operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine. The announcement of the operation followed Moscow's decision to recognize the independence of the then-self-proclaimed people's republics in Donbass after Kiev intensified its shellings, which caused mass civilian evacuations. The West responded by doubling down on massive arms assistance to Kiev and numerous gestures of support.