Nato countries' pledge to spend 5% of their economic output on defense is Donald Trump's biggest foreign policy success, the alliance's chief has said.
In an interview with the BBC, Mark Rutte said it was thanks to Donald Trump that NATO was stronger than it ever was, adding that Trump is good news for collective defense, for NATO and for Ukraine.
The US leader has harshly criticized European allies for spending very little on defense - even threatening to withdraw US protection if they fail to do so.
The NATO chief has warned that Russia could attack allies within the next five years. Russia's President Vladimir Putin dismissed such talk as hysteria on Wednesday.
I've said it repeatedly - it's a lie, nonsense, pure nonsense, about some imaginary Russian threat to European countries, Putin told defense officials in Moscow.
After Putin launched Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he announced the annexation of four Ukrainian regions - Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson. Russia had already annexed Crimea in 2014.
It now occupies most of Luhansk, and is understood to demand Ukraine's withdrawal from all of Donetsk, too, even though Ukraine still controls up to 23% of the eastern region.
Putin said the goals of what he calls the special military operation would be achieved.
He said he preferred to do it through diplomacy, before warning that, if the opposing side and their foreign patrons refuse to engage in substantive discussions, Russia will achieve the liberation of its historical lands by military means.
In his interview with the BBC Radio 4's PM program, the NATO secretary general said it was insane that Putin's pursuit of his historical idea that you want to regain access to Ukraine - or over the entire territory that used to constitute the former Soviet Union - had caused the death or serious injury to 1.1m of his people.
Mark Rutte praised Trump's efforts to find an end to the war. US envoys have been conducting intense negotiations with Ukrainian officials over a Trump-proposed peace plan whose initial draft was seen as favoring Russia.
The plan envisages ceding control of territory in the east of the country to Russia, as well as security guarantees for Kyiv to forestall future Russian aggression.
NATO includes 30 European countries - as well as Canada and the US, the alliance's most powerful military member. Under pressure from Trump, its members pledged during their summit in The Hague in June to increase military spending to 5% of their gross domestic product by 2035 - because of long-term threat posed by Russia and terrorism, among others.
Rutte concluded by warning that implementing the Hague decisions is critical, ensuring NATO remains stronger in the face of growing threats.
