Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance’s secretary-general, did not give precise figures, but Sir Adam Thomson, Britain’s outgoing permanent representative to Nato, said he thought that the goal was to speed up the response time of up to 300,000 military personnel to about two months. At present a force of this size could take up to 180 days to deploy.

The troops would act as a “follow-on force” to Nato’s existing response force, which can be deployed to a warzone within days.

At the same time Stoltenberg highlighted “the maintenance of ties between NATO and Russia.”