NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday the alliance must embark on a protracted war in Ukraine as Russian President Vladimir Putin shows no signs he will move closer to a peace deal.
“President Putin is not planning peace, he is planning more war,” Stoltenberg said in an interview with The Guardian, noting that Moscow is trying to prolong the war by “reaching authoritarian regimes like Iran or North Korea and others around too try to get more guns.”
“The need will continue because this is a war of attrition; it’s about industrial capacity to maintain support,” he added, referring to Ukraine’s ongoing needs for defense assistance.
A Ukrainian artillery crew fired on Russian positions near Bakhmut in Ukraine on March 21, 2023. (Sergey Shestak / AFP via Getty Images)
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But even while NATO members continue to support Ukraine and nations like the US, Britain, Poland, Germany and France continue to send significant amounts of aid to Kiev, only a quarter of the alliance has actually met its defense spending commitment to NATO.
In 2014, after Russia’s invasion and subsequent annexation of Crimea, NATO allies agreed to spend 2% of their GDP on defense spending for NATO by 2024.
Only seven of the 30 nations have already fulfilled their spending pledge, including Lithuania, the latest country to hit the spending mark.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (second from left), Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren (second from right) and EU Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton (right) are seen at Eindhoven Air Base March 23, 2023 in the Netherlands. (Robin Van Lonkhuijsen/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
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Russia’s Baltic neighbors, including Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, reached their spending deals along with the US, Britain, Poland and Greece.
But Stoltenberg said he would like to see that goal met by more nations this year, noting this week that it will be a key focus for the alliance at the forthcoming July summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.
“While I welcome all the progress that has been made, it is evident that we need to do more. And we have to do it faster,” Stoltenberg told reporters from Brussels on Tuesday.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg addresses a news conference at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, March 21, 2023. (Dursun Aydemir / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
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Stoltenberg said the 2% spending budget is the minimum that member states should spend on defense, not the limit.
“At our Vilnius summit in July, I expect allies to agree to a more ambitious new defense investment pledge – with at least 2% of GDP to be invested in our defence,” he said. “In this new and more competitive world, we cannot take our security for granted.”