The United States wants Australia to lift spending on defence to about $100 billion a year, with its Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warning of a “real and potentially imminent” threat from China.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Speaking as the summit opened on Tuesday, Mr Zelenskyy said Mr Putin was not interested in peace and urged leaders to support Ukraine’s defence industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He added that “there are no signs that Vladimir Putin wants to end this war”.<\/p>\n
“Russia rejects all peace proposals, including those from the US,” he said. “Putin only thinks about war.”<\/p>\n
NATO members gathering at the Hague for the two-day summit will hope to signal to the Russian President that the alliance remains united.<\/p>\n
At the meeitng, members will discuss US demands that each country hike overall defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP. \u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy are set to meet for the second time since their infamous Oval Office clash. (Reuters: Brian Snyder)<\/p>\n
The Ukrainian president has conducted a number of one-on-one meetings with NATO leaders since arriving at the summit, but wasn’t included in a leaders’ meeting aimed at securing agreement on the military spending boost.<\/p>\n
It’s a significant change from the summit in Washington last year, when Mr Zelenskyy was a prominent speaker and the alliance produced a weighty communique that included a vow to supply long-term security assistance to Ukraine as well as a commitment to back the country “on its irreversible path” to NATO membership.<\/p>\n
The US has made no new public pledges of support to Ukraine since Mr Trump took office six months ago.<\/p>\n
Mr Zelenskyy used his speech to stress it was particularly essential that Ukraine continued to take large steps forward in drone technology, which has shaped the battlefield in his country’s war with Russia.<\/p>\n
“Please, let’s make sure that our defence potential and potential of our partners work for our peace, not for Russia’s madness,” he told the summit.<\/p>\n
Rutte says NATO being ‘aggressively challenged’\u00a0<\/p>\n
Secretary-General Mark Rutte has made a point of reassuring doubters that the current US leadership is committed to NATO. However, he has also continued to highlight the need for transatlantic defence cooperation as the alliance seeks to rearm itself.<\/p>\n
“We are not living in happy land after the Berlin Wall came down. We are living in much more dangerous times and there are enemies, adversaries who might want to attack us,” Mr Rutte said ahead of the summit.<\/p>\n
“Today, NATO’s military edge is being aggressively challenged by a rapidly rearming Russia, backed by Chinese technology and armed with Iranian and North Korean weapons.<\/p>\n
“Only Europe and North America together can rise up to meet the challenge of rearmament.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
NATO members are under pressure from the Trump administration to increase their defence spending. (Reuters)<\/p>\n
Member countries meeting over Tuesday and Wednesday are likely to endorse a goal of spending 5 per cent of their GDP on defence \u2014 a target Mr Zelenskyy has endorsed as “the right level”.<\/p>\n
However, not all alliance members are on board, with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in particular saying his country cannot reach that level of expenditure as it is “unreasonable” and “would be incompatible with our welfare state and our world vision”.<\/p>\n
Putin lashes out<\/p>\n
The Kremlin, meanwhile, accused NATO of being on a path of rampant militarisation, and of portraying Russia as a “fiend of hell” in order to justify increased defence spending.<\/p>\n
NATO was founded by Western countries in 1949 to resist the threat posed by the communist Soviet Union, and Russia has cited its neighbour’s desire to join the pact, which now boasts 32 members, as one of the reasons it invaded Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Russian President Vladimir Putin is a fierce critic of NATO and has previously warned against its expansion. (Reuters: Sputnik\/Alexei Danichev)<\/p>\n
Russia denies any plan to attack the alliance, but Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said it was “largely a wasted effort” on Russia’s part to try to explain this to NATO, because it is so determined to demonise Russia.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It is an alliance created for confrontation \u2026 It is not an instrument of peace and stability,” he said.<\/p>\n
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