NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte warned today that a Russian victory in Ukraine would undermine the strength of the world's largest military alliance and that rebuilding trust in it afterward would cost trillions, the Associated Press reported.
NATO is bolstering its forces on its eastern flank on its borders with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, deploying thousands of troops and equipment to prevent Moscow from continuing its war on the territory of any of the organization's 32 members.
"If Ukraine loses, then winning back the trust of the other NATO countries will cost us much, much more than what we are currently spending on increasing industrial production," Rutte said.
"This won't cost us billions, it will cost trillions," he said in on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Rutte urges Western backers of Ukraine to "strengthen, not weaken" their support for the country.
"We need to change the trajectory of the war," Rutte said, adding that the West "cannot in the 21st century allow one country to attack another and try to colonize it".
"Those days are in the past," he stressed.
Europe fears that US President Donald Trump may decide to end the war through negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin on terms that are not satisfactory for Ukraine, but Rutte has shown caution about making hasty decisions.
"If we make a bad deal, it simply means that we will see the Russian president greeting the leaders of North Korea, Iran and China, and we cannot allow that," said the former Dutch prime minister. "From a geopolitical perspective, this would be a big, big mistake," he said.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski welcomed Trump's statement that Russia should be the first to take action to conclude a peace agreement, but warned that "this is not the same Putin that Trump remembers from his first term."
Yesterday, Trump threatened to impose high tariffs and sanctions on Moscow if a deal to stop the war was not reached, although the Kremlin is likely to ignore that warning, the AP notes. The Russian economy is already subject to sanctions from the United States and Europe.
Sikorski warned that Putin should not be put on the world stage because of Ukraine.
"The US president is the leader of the free world. Vladimir Putin is an outsider and a war criminal because of the abduction of children from Ukraine," Sikorski said.