NEW YORK, February 8. /TASS/. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged every effort on the part of the European Union and the United States to resist attempts to drag NATO into the Ukraine conflict.

"We don’t see ourselves at war with Russia and don’t seek confrontation with Russia," Scholz wrote in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal. According to the German chancellor, the United States and the EU "will resist any attempt to drag the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into" the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Scholz said that NATO’s collective deterrence and defense must be credible. He called on Germany’s NATO allies to ensure their defense spending at 2% of the gross domestic product. Scholz also mentioned the European Sky Shield Initiative launched to boost European air-defense capabilities and Berlin’s plans to base a full combat brigade in Lithuania.

On Wednesday, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said that the most important task currently facing Europe was to prevent a military conflict between NATO and Russia over Ukraine, otherwise, he warned, that would be "the equivalent of the start of a third world war." And the threat of another world war has never been greater, Hungary’s top diplomat emphasized.