Foreign ministers from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ordered the alliance's military brass to quickly craft a plan in response to the Ukraine crisis that could include redeploying forces closer to Russia, the U.S. Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The newspaper said that the foreign ministers of the NATO member countries on Tuesday ordered U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, who is serving as the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and NATO's military chief, to propose measures as "a matter of urgency" to bolster the alliance's defenses to the east.

Breedlove said the ministers had asked him to draw up by April 15 a package of measures that would include the reinforcement and redeployment of NATO assets in its eastern member states.

"We will work on air, land and sea 'reassurances' and we will look to position those 'reassurances' across the breadth of our exposure: north, centre, and south," he said.

"We are going to have to look at how our alliance now is prepared for a different paradigm, a different rule set... we will need to rethink our force posture, our force positioning, our force provisioning, readiness, etc," Breedlove said.