Rutte: Support for Ukraine to be on agenda of NATO FMs meeting
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte says support for Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression will be on the agenda of discussions of issues on the meeting of NATO defence ministers.
He said this in Brussels on Thursday before the start of a meeting of the heads of foreign diplomatic departments of NATO countries, which is taking place at the alliance's headquarters on April 3-4. “I think all of these discussions, there will be a common thread, which is Ukraine, how to keep Ukraine in the fight, how to make sure that we keep on delivering what is necessary for Ukraine to sustain in the fight, including the military aid to Ukraine,” Rutte is convinced.
Answering a question about the US administration's actions in relation to the peace agreement, the Secretary General reiterated that “the good news is that President Trump broke the deadlock on Ukraine, has started a dialogue with the Ukrainians and the Russians.” “We fully support this. I personally gave my commitment - whatever we can do, we will help. And the Americans have been absolutely clear that a deal, be it a ceasefire deal or a full deal on Ukraine, has to be lasting, has to be enduring, and that you have to make sure that Putin will never, ever try again to capture one square kilometre or one square mile of Ukraine in the future … I do not want to comment on every intermediate step other than that I very much welcome what he is doing, that we want to support those efforts, that we agree with his red lines, that there should be an enduring and lasting peace for Ukraine.”
According to the NATO Secretary General, the focus here that of all 32 [allies] are concentrated on “how to defend NATO territory, against the Russians, our long-term threat, which will be there even after, I hope, there will be a deal on Ukraine.” “The Russian threat will be there for many years to come. We are seeing what China is doing. We seeing how these two theatres, the Indo-Pacific and the Euro-Atlantic, are getting more and more connected by the fact that the Russians are working together with the North Koreans, with the Chinese, with the mullahs in Iran. So we have to look at all these theatres in conjunction, and that will be our focus,” he explained.
Rutte indicated that this would be the first meeting of foreign ministers with the participation of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “We will welcome him, and we will discuss, of course, a lot of things, but particularly, of course, focusing on ramping up defence spending,” the Secretary General detailed.
At the same time, Rutte again noted that over the past couple of months “we literally see hundreds of billions of euros/dollars rolling in.” “So this is probably the biggest increase in defence spending here on the European side of NATO since the end of the Cold War. But we still need more. So that will be discussed,” he added.
Asked by reporters whether allies intend to hear from Rubio about reducing the American presence in Europe, the secretary general said: “But this is not new. For many years, the Americans have told us, and they started 50 years ago, that they want to pivot more towards Asia. That there are issues in the Indo-Pacific the Americans have to attend to that's one. Second they have, for many years, told the Europeans, you have to spend more … So these issues are not new. There are no plans for them to all of a sudden draw down their presence here in Europe, as I said yesterday. But we know that for America being the superpower they are, they have to attend to more theatres than one.”
The Secretary General also said that during the current meeting, the allies will be joined by partners from the Indo-Pacific region, in particular from Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. “We will discuss how to deepen that relationship, very much, focusing on another big subject these two days, which is the defence industrial production … Of course, we also have the Ukrainian Foreign Minister here. We have Kaja Kallas here,” Rutte noted.