Our goal is to be so protected that we are not attacked, said NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte today before the start of the meeting of defense ministers from the pact at the alliance's headquarters in Brussels, BTA reported.
We will decide today what we need to protect ourselves in the event of an attack. I expect that we will approve the set goals. Today is a key day, we will adopt decisions on the goals for acquiring capabilities – this is related to the spending that we will provide for defense in the coming years, Rutte explained.
Additional investments in defense will be significant, which is why I said earlier that we are about to set much higher spending goals, he pointed out. Rutte noted that NATO needs additional air defense systems, long-range missiles and troop mobility and deployment capabilities. The Secretary General said this was the last meeting before the NATO summit in The Hague on June 24-25.