NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte says that the leaders must agree on three issues by the alliance summit, which will be held from June 24 to June 26 in 2025 in The Hague. He named support for Ukraine as the first.

This follows from Rutte’s answer to a question from journalists during a joint press conference with Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs, which took place on Thursday at the Ādaži Military Base (Latvia) as part of the alliance secretary general’s visit.

"There will be a couple of big issues we need to debate over the coming months. Of course, first of all, we have to make sure that Ukraine prevails and that Putin will not win in Ukraine. That is absolute priority number one," Rutte said.

"But behind that, there are two other big issues at stake. One is that 2%, when you take out the US spending, we are now at 2% in Europe as NATO, it is simply not enough... It is simply not enough. So we will need to have the debate on spending more," he said.

"And another big issue is defence production. We are not producing enough at this moment. We have to do more to replenish our stockpiles, to make sure that we are ready to face off any adversary. So these two issues, defence spending and defence production. And all of this, working with our partners, the EU, but also in the Indo Pacific, including Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the southern neighbourhood. This is crucial. But defence spending and ramping up defence production, we have to get this done," the NATO Secretary General said.