NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has warned that any attack on the Alliance would be met with a “devastating” response, as he described Russia’s campaign against Ukraine as an attempt to break the country through sustained strikes on civilian infrastructure.
Speaking at a pre-ministerial press conference at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Rutte said he had recently visited Kyiv and witnessed the effects of what he called Russia’s “relentless attacks”, including bombardment of critical national infrastructure. “Once again, President Putin is trying to break the people of Ukraine, hoping to weaken their resolve,” Rutte said, adding that Russia’s strikes were aimed at undermining basic services and civilian life.
He said Ukraine’s ability to endure continued attacks had been repeatedly demonstrated, but warned the country could not sustain the conflict alone, stressing that NATO allies and partners remained the source of almost all military support being delivered to Kyiv. “Ninety-nine percent of all military support to Ukraine has come from NATO allies and partners,” he said.
Rutte said NATO’s support continued through multiple mechanisms, including coordination through its command in Wiesbaden, training and lessons learned efforts, and political consultation through the NATO-Ukraine Council. He also highlighted the ongoing role of the “PURL” initiative, which provides US equipment funded by allies and partners. “This funding provided by allies to support deliveries through PURL saves lives in Ukraine every single day,” he said.
Rutte said the war in Ukraine remained central to NATO’s security outlook and warned that the Alliance must ensure it retains the ability to respond decisively to any future threat. He said NATO’s deterrence posture was designed to prevent conflict, but insisted the consequences for any aggressor would be severe. “If anyone tries to attack this defensive alliance… our reaction will be lethal,” he said.
He added that NATO’s response would be devastating and said the Alliance must ensure it remains capable of such a reaction in the years ahead. “Because our reaction will be devastating, what we need to do is make sure that in a couple of years, we can still react in a devastating way,” he said.
Rutte was speaking ahead of a meeting of NATO defence ministers, where allies are expected to discuss progress on defence spending increases and industrial capacity. He pointed to the Alliance’s commitment to increase spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035 and said ministers would examine how to accelerate production of air defence systems, ammunition and supply chains.
He also confirmed the launch of NATO’s new Arctic Sentry enhanced vigilance activity, intended to bring together allied activity in the High North under a single operational framework, warning that Russia and China were becoming increasingly active in the region.
And to be fair NATO, with the US, does have the capacity and numbers to defeat any Russian attacks/advance etc, but this would depend on political will to comply with article 5 AND any covert pre-attack grey zone attacks on European defence infrastructure and IT/defence systems by the Russians.
NATO, without the USA, could do it. The European and Canadian wings of NATO outnumber Russia in most categories.
As long as European NATO can co-ordinate without American Leadership.
Yep this is the present issue with NATO as a deterrent.. All the military power in the world is irrelevant if you don’t have credibility and have successfully communicated this to the potential enemy.. NATO is suffering a massive political credibility issue and I’m not sure it will go way.
Yeah…..
Something tells me Turkey, Hungary, Spain, Belgium and maybe some others wouldn’t lift a finger against a Russian attack in Eastern Europe
That’s the big question ?
you can add others to that list of questionnable, like Germany and Poland, who can’t even symbolically commit some token forces in a Ukraine if a peace settlement was done.
I think folk need to remember the Orange Oaf is coffin dodging. He has caused more damage to alliances than any Potus ever. If, just if, the US was kicked out of its basing in Europe? It loses far more than it gains. And fact? Putin is gaining yards, not miles and at a great cost. The Russians could not operate on that scale Europe wide.
Not to sat we collectively need to spend more on defence, defence of the Baltics is a priority.
Trump is the best thing ever t happen to European NATO. First person to actually call us out collectively on not meeting our obligations. Thankfully the European nations are now waking up and spending, at least a decade to late.
“best thing ever” by deeply damaging relations with NATO’s other members (tariffs, “51st state”, Greenland, support to European far-right, etc) and the all idea that NATO members support each other, therefore massively weakening NATO’s deterrence, more than Putin ever hoped for?
There were far more diplomatic ways to force Europeans to wake up and spend more, other channels, other types of pressure, while showing a strong NATO to the outside world.
If the orange felon has done what he has done it is exactly because he could not care less about NATO and allies.
Not even remotely. Trump was not the first American President to bitch about Europe being a safe part of the world that didn’t need to spend a lot on defence. Bush whinged about it, Obama whinged about it, Clinton whinged about it. European Defence Spending started going up during *BIDEN’S* Administration. You know why? Because in 2022 the geostrategic situation changed and a major Land War broke out when Russia invaded Ukraine openly.
Trump had fuck all to do with it.
What Trump has manage to do is undermine the collective security of NATO, sabotage Ukrainian resistance and thereby make European NATO’s situation more precarious, and outright threaten NATO allies.
Trump is if anything the worst President in history from any sort of NATO perspective, including an American one.
Total bollocks
Yeah sure, such bollocks that you literally have no counter argument.
I wonder what would happen to Kaliningrad in this situation.
The Finns, Swedes and Norway could get to St Pete in afew weeks alone. Its all by the by, there wont be any war, not with the chance of going nuclear either way.
Response ? If that happen after a few days of fighting or weeks would it go Nuclear ? One thing for sure some NATO members are starting to spend more on Defence and some not and sadly the UK are one at the top of the list for lagging .And this current government of ours have no intention of doing so but will keep selling our kit off what’s left of it 🙄
I would say it would be very very unlikely to go nuclear.. because no one is going to press the MAD button.. Russia would not even Nuc a nation that cannot use nuclear weapons back.. Russia May throw a sub-strategic weapon if it was seeing an existential threat such as a major thrust towards Moscow by overwhelming land forces.
The role, responsibilities and actions of the military reserves, civil authorities and civilians in the event of war were always set out in HMG’s War Book, which was regularly reviewed and updated. It has apparently not been visited for years and allowed to lapse. It needs to be urgently resuscitated and a few more pages added to cover the increased number of grey zone threats to the nation, including action plan regarding cyber attacks, sabotage, disinformation, cable cutting etc.
The WW2 book was really extensive and covered a mass of things. The moment Chamberlain announced that we were at war barrage balloons went up over key sites, air raid shelters were designated, black out rules came in, plans were enacted for removal of gold reserves and national works of art, detention of enemy aliens, and so on. The reserves were mobilised, with about half being drafted into TA2 formations for air defence and defence of key installations.
We need to greatly increase numbers in the reserve forces, because it will take time to build up the mass needed and create the training depots to replace all those sold off in the Tory years.
HMG needs to make a start on the War plan, because a lot of the elements take a few years to bring to fruition, like shadow arms factories, stockpiles of military equipment and parts, security arrangements and infrastructure for critical sites etc, etc. All of this was going on quietly behind the scenes in the late thirties and was unveiled to the public following the declaration of war.
As we have let the War Book lapse, I imagine there us a lot of work to be done across all government departments and the sooner it gets underway, the better.