President met NATO Secretary General

President Andrej Kiska and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg spoke in Kosice on Thursday about how to explain to citizens the need to invest in security and defence. Slovakia's second largest city hosted a meeting of presidents of the Bucharest Nine, representing countries that are on the eastern flank of the Alliance. "Ensuring citizens' protection is the basic role of the state," President Kiska said before the meeting of the heads of state. The Slovak president stressed that there's a need to speak about defence even in peacetime. He pointed to the fact that there was a threat of war in Ukraine five years ago and that the conflict would have taken place only slightly over 100 kilometres east of Kosice. "Every citizen would probably have asked at that time whether or not we were prepared, whether or not we had invested enough in defence. We must think about this in peacetime as well and explain to every citizen how important investments in our security are," he said. As Kiska noted, the NATO secretary general appreciated Slovakia's readiness to invest two percent of GDP in defence by 2024 and to invest in its modernization. The presidents also talked about how to convince people living in European countries who do not feel sure that the NATO army is well-prepared to intervene if any problem occurs. Hybrid threats, including military, diplomatic, communication and economic were also on the agenda.