NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Sunday this week’s meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will go a long way to demonstrating whether Putin is serious about peace.
“Next Friday will be important because it will be about testing Putin, how serious he is on bringing this terrible war to an end,” Rutte said on ABC’s “This Week” in discussing the Alaskan summit designed to help end Russia’s war with Ukraine.
Speaking to host Jonathan Karl, Rutte said he believes Trump is willing to push Russia’s president about this brutal war.
“I do believe that, Donald Trump, the president, wants to end this,” Rutte told Karl. “He wants to end the terrible loss of life. He wants to end the terrible damage being done to the infrastructure in Ukraine. So many people losing their lives. So much damage being done.”
Rutte, a former prime minister of the Netherlands, added: “We have seen President Trump putting incredible pressure on Russia.”
Trump has faced criticism for setting up a meeting with Putin without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, though there have been suggestions that Zelenskyy might still be invited.
The president has also been assailed — including by former Trump national security adviser John Bolton later on the same ABC program — for bringing Putin on to American soil and for stating that Ukraine might need to yield some of its territory.
“I think Trump has made some mistakes already,” Bolton said, “No. 1, in holding this meeting on American soil, legitimizing a pariah leader of a rogue state. Second, he’s allowed Putin to get first mover advantage by putting his peace plan on the table first.”
Speaking to Karl, Rutte said he saw the Alaskan meeting as a valid starting point, but agreed no deal was possible without Ukraine, or without considering Ukraine’s long-term security and independence.
“It will be about territory,” Rutte said of whatever deal ends up ending the war. “It will be, of course, about security guarantees, but also about the absolute need to acknowledge that Ukraine decides its own future, that Ukraine has to be a sovereign nation, deciding on its own geopolitical future, of course having no limitations to its own military troop levels, and for NATO to have no limitations on our presence on the eastern flank in countries like Latvia, Estonia and Finland.”
