(MENAFN- UkrinForm) NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has urged Ukraine's allies to provide greater support, ensuring a lasting peace that would deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from considering another attack.
At the same time, he emphasized the need to strengthen collective defense capabilities, according to Ukrinform.
In an interview with the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag , Rutte highlighted the heavy toll Russia is paying for minimal territorial gains.
"The Russians are paying for it with 1,000 to 1,500 people a day who are dying or seriously wounded. And yet the Russians are not achieving their goals. And our job is to ensure that they never achieve their goals. So no: Ukraine is not losing. And we must support them in getting into a position of strength," Rutte said.
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Speaking about the prospects for a peace agreement, he urged not to be naive about Putin.
"We must ensure that he [Putin] can never, ever again conquer even one square kilometer of Ukraine," Rutte said.
Once peace is secured, he said, Putin must also be deterred from ever contemplating an attack on NATO, as the consequences for him would be catastrophic.
Rutte outlined the key prerequisite for any negotiations: Ukraine's partners must place Kyiv in the strongest possible position by continuing to provide weapons and training for its military.
He also underscored the urgency of increasing European defense production and spending. The "right decisions" must be made, and they urgently need to be made this year, he said.
Rutte said that since 2014, European allies and Canada have invested over $640 billion in defense, and more than two-thirds of NATO members now meet the 2% GDP benchmark for military spending. But even more investment is needed, and the allies will decide in the coming months how exactly this will be measured, he said. Rutte stressed that "it will be much, much, much more than two percent" and recalled that NATO's economy is 20 times larger than Russia's.
"We need additional production lines, additional shifts, more ammunition, more Leopard 2 tanks, more F-35 fighter jets and more weapons throughout NATO territory -- from America to Turkey. More money, more industrial production; then we can manage to deter him. Then he will never dare to attack us," Rutte concluded.
During his first term, U.S. President Donald Trump called on European NATO members to increase defense spending. Now, he has proposed raising the target to 5% of GDP, although some countries have only recently reached the 2% threshold.
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