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NATO chief says Russian victory over Ukraine would have a costly impact on alliance's credibility

[January 23, 2025] By LORNE COOK

BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte warned on Thursday that a Russian victory over Ukraine would undermine the dissuasive force of the world’s biggest military alliance and that its credibility could cost trillions to restore.

NATO has been ramping up its forces along its eastern flank with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, deploying thousands of troops and equipment to deter Moscow from expanding its war into the territory of any of the organization’s 32 member countries.

“If Ukraine loses then to restore the deterrence of the rest of NATO again, it will be a much, much higher price than what we are contemplating at this moment in terms of ramping up our spending and ramping up our industrial production,” Rutte said.

“It will not be billions extra; it will be trillions extra,” he said, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Rutte insisted that Ukraine’s Western backers must “step up and not scale back the support” they are providing to the country, almost three years after Russia’s full-fledged invasion began.

“We have to change the trajectory of the war,” Rutte said, adding that the West “cannot allow in the 21st century that one country invades another country and tries to colonize it."

"We are beyond those days,” he said.

Anxiety in Europe is mounting that U.S. President Donald Trump might seek to quickly end the war in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on terms that are unfavorable to Ukraine, but Rutte appeared wary about trying to do things in a hurry.

“If we got a bad deal, it would only mean that we will see the president of Russia high-fiving with the leaders from North Korea, Iran and China and we cannot accept that,” the former Dutch prime minister said. “That would be geopolitically a big, big mistake.”

Trump’s new envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, criticized allies who talk of continuing the war but still won’t increase their defense spending to NATO guidelines. He said Americans think it is “outrageous” that the Biden administration refused to talk to Putin.

NATO leaders have agreed that each member country should spend at least 2% of gross domestic product on their military budgets. The alliance estimates that 23 members will reach that level this year, although almost a third will still fall short. Poland and Estonia spend most in GDP terms.

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NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte arrives at the Annual Meeting of World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

“You cannot ask the American people to expand the umbrella of NATO when the current members aren’t paying their fair share,” Grenell said. The United States spends most within NATO on its own budget, in dollar terms, and allies rely on its military might for their defense.

“When we have leaders who are going to talk about more war, we need to make sure that those leaders are spending the right amount of money,” Grenell said. “We need to be able to avoid war, and that means a credible threat from NATO.”

He also insisted that former President Joe Biden was wrong not to talk to Putin, who was indicted for war crimes in 2023 by the International Criminal Court for the “unlawful deportation” of children from Ukraine to Russia.

“You should be able to talk to people," Grenell said. "Talking is a tactic, and you’re not going to be able to solve problems peacefully unless you actually have conversations,” he said.

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski welcomed Trump's acknowledgement that it must be Russia which should make the first peace moves, but he cautioned that “this is not the Putin that President Trump knew in his first term.”

On Wednesday, Trump threatened to impose stiff taxes, tariffs and sanctions on Moscow if an agreement isn’t reached to end the war, but that warning will probably fall on deaf ears in the Kremlin. Russia's economy is already weighed down by a multitude of U.S. and European sanctions.

Sikorksi warned that Putin should not be put at the center of the world stage over Ukraine.

“The president of the United States is the leader of the free world. Vladimir Putin is an outcast and an indicted war criminal for stealing Ukrainian children,” Sikorski said.

"I would suggest that Putin has to earn the summit, that if he gets it early, it elevates him beyond his, significance and gives him the wrong idea about the trajectory of this,” he said.

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