RT reported on January 13 that NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said that members of the US-led military bloc need to sharply increase defense spending if they do not want to be pressured or even threatened by Russia.
The statement was made during a joint meeting of the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee (AFET) and Security and Defence Subcommittee (SEDE).
According to the head of NATO, although two-thirds of the alliance's members have met the target of spending 2% of GDP on defense as committed since 2014, that figure is still not enough to protect them from Russian power in the future. "We are safe now, but not in the next 4 to 5 years," he warned.
US President-elect Donald Trump has proposed raising defense spending to 5% of GDP, but so far, no NATO country, including the US, has achieved this target.
Meanwhile, at a meeting with defense officials in December 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow is spending more than 6.3% of GDP on the military and called on the military to use the budget reasonably.
The NATO leader has repeatedly called for increased defense spending. Last month, he even proposed that EU countries cut health care, pensions and social services to free up resources for the military.
Although Western European countries have continuously provided modern weapons to Ukraine since the conflict with Russia broke out in 2022, Mr. Rutte commented that NATO's defense industry is still too small, fragmented and slow to develop.
He also stressed that it would take the entire NATO bloc a year to produce the amount of weapons and ammunition that Russia can produce in just three months.
Before becoming NATO Secretary General from October 2024, Mr. Mark Rutte was Prime Minister of the Netherlands.
