“I’m delighted to report that we are firmly on track to delivering [on] the €40 billion pledge for the coming year as agreed in Washington,” Rutte told a press conference on Wednesday, referring to the NATO leaders’ summit in July.
“I can announce today that NATO allies committed €20.9 billion in military assistance to Ukraine during the first half of 2024, and allies are on track to meet their commitments for the rest of the year,” he said.
Rutte also confirmed that a NATO hub in Wiesbaden, Germany to deliver military assistance to Ukraine will be operational next month.
While Ukraine’s Western partners dither about giving Kyiv permission to use donated weapons to hit targets inside Russia and over just when it should be allowed into NATO, Russia’s allies are ramping up their support for Moscow. There are reports from Kyiv that North Korean troops have been dispatched to the war — although Rutte said NATO had no confirmed information yet.
“The growing alignment of authoritarian actors like China, Russia, North Korea and Iran is undermining stability in the Euro-Atlantic and in the Indo-Pacific regions,” Rutte said.
In a sign of the global challenge being posed to democracies, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand will take part in the NATO defense ministers’ meeting on Thursday and Friday for the first time in the alliance’s history.