Nato chief Mark Rutte says Russia relations should be restored after war

Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte said relations with Russia should eventually be normalized once the fighting ends in Ukraine. 

“It’s normal if the war would have stopped for Europe somehow, step by step, and also for the US, step by step, to restore normal relations with Russia,” Rutte said in a Bloomberg TV interview with Annmarie Hordern. “But we are absolutely not there yet, we have to maintain the pressure on them” to ensure that Russia takes the negotiations seriously,” he said. 

Rutte has been engaging in intense diplomacy in recent weeks to keep the transatlantic alliance together as President Donald Trump has pared back support for Ukraine and has indicated that the US will step back from its traditional security role in Europe. The surprise move has sent European countries scrambling to boost defense spending and rethink their military positioning.     

 

Rutte met with Trump Thursday in the White House, where the two discussed a potential US-brokered ceasefire in Ukraine. Europe has largely been sidelined in the negotiations, a fact that has rankled many leaders on the continent.  

“We have to maintain pressure on them to make sure that they are ready to engage seriously in talks with the American administration and of course the Ukrainians,” Rutte said of the ongoing talks. 

Rutte’s biggest task is to keep the US engaged in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization amid Trump’s common refrain that members are taking advantage of Washington by not spending enough on defense. Trump has previously threatened to pull the US out of the military alliance.   

Rutte is walking a fine line between the US — Nato’s most important member — and Europe, which is dealing with an increasingly aggressive Russia.  

After Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s televised clash in the Oval Office, Rutte called on the Ukrainian leader to repair the relationship while praising everything the US had done for Ukraine. Unlike most European leaders, Rutte didn’t express words of support for Ukraine’s embattled leader. 

Rutte’s good working relationship with Trump has been considered to be one of his strong suits as he stepped into the role. He was one of the first foreign leaders to congratulate Trump on his re-election and one of the first to visit him in Mar-a-Lago in November. 

The two men built a good working relationship during Trump’s first mandate when Rutte was prime minister of the Netherlands. Since taking over at Nato, Rutte has made boosting defense investment and increasing spending one of his main messages, which resonates well with Trump. 

Nato will seek to boost its members’ defense spending target to at least 3 per cent at the next summit in June. Trump has demanded allies spend 5 per cent — a goal widely viewed as unrealistic and one even the US doesn’t meet.     (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)