What do you think that Trump said a month ago that Ukraine can recover occupied territories and now says the opposite? The question to Mark Rutte, Secretary General of NATO, occurred this Wednesday in the corridors of the US Senate before he went to the White House to meet with US President Donald Trump. Rutte's response has been eloquent: “I have complete confidence, he is the only one who can achieve it.”
Rutte arrives at the White House 24 hours after the summit announced in Budapest between Trump and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, was suspended, and also after the meeting last Friday between the president of the United States and the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Since President Trump was re-elected, NATO has been renewed and revitalized,” Rutte said in the US Senate: “We decided in The Hague to spend 5% on defense, matching the spending of the United States. As for Ukraine, the president decided to send weapons again, but paid for by the allies. We are working hard on it and the first billions of weapons have already been sent to Ukraine from the United States. United, paid for by the allies. And of course, the Europeans are stepping up when it comes to security guarantees for Ukraine following a long-term ceasefire or peace agreement. “We all pray that that happens soon.”
Rutte explained that the objective of his visit has to do with how NATO can “help make its plan to achieve total peace in Ukraine a reality, something for which, of course, we all pray after its enormous success in Gaza.”
The Secretary General of NATO, who already at the Hague summit at the end of June gave visible signs of excessive flattery to the US president, has continued along the same line before meeting him, remembering the call to Putin last February and forgetting the fight with Zelensky in the Oval Office: “The US president broke the deadlock, put pressure on Putin in February, assumed that role of leadership that only he can play and that he is carrying out, and I really congratulate him for it.”
“I have complete confidence in President Trump, he is the only one who can achieve it, he is the leader of the most powerful nation in the world,” Rutte insisted: “You are all citizens of the most powerful nation in the world, the most powerful economy, the most powerful army, and you have a president with a lot of experience thanks to his first term, and with a clear idea about how to end this war in a lasting and definitive way. He wants that. He wants to end the spill of blood. He wants to end the killings. Therefore, your leadership is crucial. He is clearly exercising it and he has to dialogue with all the leaders: he has to talk with Putin, he has to talk with Zelensky, exactly as he did with Gaza, putting pressure on all the parties involved to reach an agreement. And that's exactly what he's doing here.” That is to say, Rutte places Zelensky and Putin on similar levels, as “involved parties” on whom to “pressure.”
Rutte has insisted on linking the shaky truce in Gaza with the possibility of an agreement for Ukraine: “Now he wants to achieve the same with the war in Ukraine. I cannot predict exactly how it will take place, but obviously there will still be many conversations. I am quite confident that we will be able to achieve results. In the future there will be many more conversations with the leaders of Ukraine and Russia, in any format and in any context, to achieve peace.”