Nato chief urges ‘step up’ in support for Ukraine
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Vladimir Putin victory would lead to bloc’s members spending ‘trillions’ more on defence, says Mark Rutte. The head of the Nato military alliance has called for a “step up” in support for Ukraine, to put Kyiv in the strongest position to achieve a sustainable peace deal with Russia.
Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mark Rutte warned against scaling back support for Ukraine, saying it was essential to “change the trajectory of the war”. Rutte said a bad end to the Russia-Ukraine war would lead to Vladimir Putin “high-fiving with the leaders of North Korea, Iran and China”. If Ukraine were to lose the war, he added, Nato members would need to spend trillions more on defence.
He was speaking after Donald Trump threatened Russia with taxes, tariffs and sanctions if a deal to end the war in Ukraine is not struck soon. A peace deal must be sustainable, Rutte said, avoiding a repeat of the Minsk peace talks in 2014 which were followed, eight years later, by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Rutte told attenders at a breakfast organised by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation that “there is a commitment that Ukraine will become a member of Nato”. But Trump’s new envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, pushed back against Rutte, a former prime minister of the Netherlands, demanding that European Nato members increase their military spending.
