Allied leaders gathered for a summit on Thursday, Sept. 4 to buttress support for Kiev and bolster defenses against a Russia they now see as hostile for the first time since the Cold War.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, Polish President Branislaw Komorowski and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban arrived at Newport after NATO’s top official accused Moscow outright of attacking Ukraine.

Moscow denies it has troops in Ukraine but NATO says more than 1,000 Russian soldiers are operating in the country.

NATO has said it has no plans to intervene militarily in Ukraine. It has focused on beefing up the defenses of former Soviet bloc eastern European countries that joined the alliance in the last 15 years. The Baltic states Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, the only parts of the former Soviet Union itself to be admitted to NATO, fear Moscow could meddle in their affairs with the same rationale it applied in Ukraine — protecting Russians.

“We must use our military to ensure a persistent presence in Eastern Europe, making clear to Russia that we will always uphold our Article 5 commitments to collective self-defense,” U.S. President Barack Obama and U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron wrote in a joint editorial in the Times of London.

The 28 allies are also expected to discuss how to tackle Islamic State straddling parts of Iraq and Syria, which has emerged as a new threat on the alliance’s southern flank, and how to stabilize Afghanistan when NATO forces leave at year’s end.

This report compiled with elements from Reuters and the Associated Press.