BRUSSELS (CN) — America’s allies called to safeguard their collective house on Wednesday by supporting Ukraine and focusing on defense, as NATO foreign ministers met for the last time before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
New NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte explicitly warned the incoming government not to push Ukraine toward a peace deal that could create a “dire security threat not only to Europe, but also to the U.S.”
The Western military alliance’s members are growing increasingly uneasy with what Trump’s comeback will mean for Western support for Ukraine.
Rutte’s remarks at the end of the two-day meeting came after Russian President Vladimir Putin spooked NATO allies last week by praising Trump’s approach and saying he would “find a solution” to end the war.
“What was said about the desire to restore relations with Russia, to bring about the end of the Ukrainian crisis, in my opinion this deserves attention at least,” Putin said.
Ukraine’s NATO invite
Advisers to Trump — including his incoming Russia-Ukraine envoy, retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg — have been floating public and private proposals to end the Ukraine war by ceding large parts of the country’s territory to Russia for the foreseeable future.
Ahead of this week’s talks, Ukraine had declared it would not settle for anything less than NATO membership to guarantee its future security.
In a letter to his NATO counterparts, seen by Courthouse News, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said an invitation to the alliance would remove one of Russia’s main arguments for waging its war.
Although NATO has said since the war broke out in February 2022 that Ukraine’s path to membership was “irreversible,” the Western military alliance has not yet committed to issuing an invitation nor to setting a timeline for membership.
Since those decisions require consensus among NATO’s 32 members, those steps seem unlikely in the near future as the United States, Germany and Ukraine-skeptic countries like Hungary remain hesitant.
Some NATO diplomats had hoped before this week’s talks that the urgency of safeguarding support before Trump takes office would move the needle on the issue.
However, Tuesday’s dinner, which was dedicated to support for Ukraine, produced no progress on the membership issue.
Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said his country was among a group — including staunch Ukraine supporters like the three Baltic countries — that sees an invitation as “a necessary step.”
“I don’t think that there is (…) agreement on that,” Lipavsky said.
Some NATO diplomats suggest individual Western countries could offer Ukraine security guarantees, rather than the entire alliance. However, some allies could hesitate to appear being directly involved in the war.
Spending push
After the two-day talks, Rutte urged NATO allies to increase military aid for Ukraine to strengthen Kyiv’s position if it enters negotiations with Moscow.
“We will all need to do more. The stronger our military support to Ukraine is now, the stronger their hand will be at the negotiating table,” Rutte said.
“Putin is not interested in peace. He is pressing on, trying to take more territory. Because he thinks he can break Ukraine’s resolve and ours, but he is wrong,” he added.
European NATO members have increased their defense spending substantially in recent years, especially following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Western military alliance estimates that 23 of its 32 members will meet the 2% GDP spending goal this year.
As NATO countries brace for renewed pressure from Trump to raise their defense spending, Rutte has been a vocal advocate of raising the current target, though he hasn’t said whether he thinks the 3% floated by Trump is a good figure.
“I believe strongly — and I know many other allies believe strongly — that 2% is simply not enough. It is simply not enough if, longer term, we want to keep our deterrence at the level that it is now,” Rutte said.
“Now it is OK and we can now defend ourselves, and nobody should try to attack us. But I want that to stay the same in four or five years,” he added.
Rutte also sharply criticized defense companies, saying NATO would not only have to spend more, but get better value out of its purchases.
“We are producing not enough, at too high prices, and delivery is too slow, so defense industry needs to put in more shifts, needs to put in more production lines,” Rutte said.
“We cannot have a situation where we just pay more for the same and we see large kickbacks to the shareholders,” he told reporters in Brussels.
Rutte added that slow delivery had forced some NATO members like Poland to turn to South Korean weapons producers because our “own defense companies are not producing at the rate we need.”