THE HAGUE—Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the NATO summit on Tuesday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had to be stopped because “his objectives reached beyond Ukraine.”
Zelenskyy was hugged by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and greeted warmly by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen when he came on stage during a session of the defense industry forum at the summit in The Hague.
Zelenskyy—who left the G7 summit in Canada last week without gaining any new pledge of assistance from President Donald Trump—said: “There are no signs that Putin wants to stop this war. Russia rejects all peace proposals, including those from the United States of America.”
He said: “Putin only thinks about war. That’s a fact. Maybe he connects his own political survival with his ability to keep killing. So as long as he kills, he lives.”
Zelenskyy told his audience, “No doubt we must stop Putin now in Ukraine, but we have to understand that his objectives reach beyond Ukraine.”
A target of 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) for each member country is expected to be agreed upon on Wednesday—the second and final day of the summit—more than doubling the 2 percent benchmark set during a summit in Wales in 2014.
The target includes 3.5 percent of GDP for core military spending and 1.5 percent for security-related infrastructure.
Zelenskyy said he believed 5 percent was the right level.
“A united Europe can create a defense capability that will destroy Russia’s illusion that war with Europe could bring it anything,” he said.
Earlier, Von der Leyen and Rutte both spelt out the importance of beefing up Europe’s defense industries in order to compete with Russia and other hostile countries such as China and Iran.
In March, Von der Leyen outlined a five-point plan called ReArm Europe that she said could boost the European Union’s defense spending by 800 billion euros ($840 billion).
‘Tectonic Shift’ on Defense Spending
She told the summit on Tuesday that in the past few months, there had been a “once-in-a-generation tectonic shift” on defense spending in Europe.
Von der Leyen said, “Tomorrow the summit will set … historic new spending targets for NATO allies, but how we invest is just as important as how much you invest.”
She said the defense industry needed to not just replenish stocks of arms and equipment but to “learn from Ukraine’s battlefield experience.”
Von der Leyen said there had been a 500 percent increase in the number of defense industry tech startups since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, but she said there was a need for them to “scale up.”
She said: “Our continent is home to so many innovators and pioneers. They must be able to find what they need to thrive right here in Europe.”
Rutte said, “It’s simply unthinkable that Russia, which has an economy 25 times smaller than NATO’s, should be able to outproduce and outgun us.”
He said NATO must produce more arms to prevent war, but he said it required a “quantum leap.”
Rutte said the 5 percent spending targets to be announced on Wednesday would produce a “huge defense dividend” that would create millions of jobs on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
“NATO’s leaders are about to take a historic step to provide the resources necessary for strong defense, and now it’s up to industry to deliver, to deliver and yes, to deliver,” he added.
Trump is due to arrive in The Hague in time for the signing, on Wednesday, of the agreement on new defense spending targets.
A large section of The Hague has been sealed off for the summit, and around 27,000 police officers—half the Netherlands’ entire force—are on duty, along with more than 10,000 Dutch military personnel.
Railway Sabotage Investigation
On Tuesday morning, the Netherlands’ caretaker justice minister, David van Weel, told the NATO Public Forum that a fire that damaged 30 rail cables on Monday, affecting trains operating to and from Schiphol airport, may have been sabotage.
“It could be an activist group. It could be another state. It could be anything,” he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has denied that Russia has any plans to attack NATO.
On Tuesday, Peskov said of NATO: “It is an alliance created for confrontation … It is not an instrument of peace and stability … [it] is confidently moving along the path of rampant militarization.”
Peskov said that to justify the extra spending, “you need to draw a picture of a fiend of hell, a monster.”
“And [from] the point of view of these NATO functionaries, our country is the one best suited for the role of the monster,” he added.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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