June 9 (UPI) — NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte was expected to call for member nations and allies to increase defense spending in London on Monday.
Rutte is set to deliver remarks at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a British think tank also known as Chatham House, in London and meet with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on the visit to London.
“The fact is, we need a quantum leap in our collective defense,” he is expected to say according to remarks shared with reporters.
It is anticipated that Rutte will ask NATO allies to increase their defense spending by 400%. He’s likely to lay out an outline for why it’s necessary for each to agree to up their military spending to 5% of GDP when they meet at a summit in The Hague later this month.
“The work ahead of us for the [NATO summit] in The Hague is clear,” Rutte posted to X Thursday. “We need a new defense investment plan that will ensure we have the resources we need to be able to deter and defend in this more dangerous world.”
Each will be asked to invest millions more on tanks and artillery shells as Rutte will focus on the possibility of an aggressive Russia in the future.
“The fact is, danger will not disappear even when the war in Ukraine ends,” Rutte is expected to say while adding that, that Russia won’t back down on its military even if and after when its war on Ukraine ends.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov already reportedly responded Monday to what Rutte is expected to discuss and said that NATO “is demonstrating itself as an instrument of aggression and confrontation.”
NATo already announced Friday that Rutte will ask for its allies to spend 3.5% of that 5% on core defense, with the other 1.5% to go to defense and security-related investments.
Rutte is also slated to meet with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer while in London Monday.