NATO leaders have agreed to a massive spike in defense spending, overcoming internal divisions and relegating Ukraine to a secondary agenda item to finalize a historic pact that will double members’ military budgets. At a short summit in The Hague, the US-led military bloc committed to raising defense expenditures to 5% of member GDP by 2035, a dramatic escalation from the current 2% target.
US President Donald Trump hailed the agreement as a “monumental win,” having pressured European members to “pay their share” since the first term.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte framed the spending surge as building an alliance that is “stronger, fairer, and more lethal”, a mantra he has championed since June 2025 as NATO’s new strategic doctrine.
Rutte has been doubling down on flattery, privately texting Trump praise for his “decisive action” by attacking Iran and crediting him for NATO’s historic 5% defense spending target increase. During the summit the NATO chief then likened the US president to a “daddy” using “strong language,” defending Trump’s recent on-camera f-bomb about Iran and Israel.
In an unusually short five-paragraph statement NATO leaders cited undefined “long-term threats” from Russia while Ukraine was only mentioned in one sentence. Ukrainian Leader Vladimir Zelensky was confined to a pre-summit dinner, excluded from key meetings, and granted a sidelined conversation with Trump, who stated that ceasefire talks were “not on the agenda”.
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25 June 2025
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stuttered when explaining why he had called US President Donald Trump “daddy.”
“The daddy thing, I didn’t call him daddy,” he told a journalist.
“What I said is that, sometimes in Europe, I hear, sometimes, countries saying: ‘Hey Mark, will the US stay with us?’” Rutte said, adding that this sounds “like a small child” talking.
President Vladimir Putin’s envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, made a joke about NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte calling US President Donald Trump “daddy.”
“Did this picture foreshadow NATO’s Secretary-General calling President Trump “Daddy” today?” he wrote on X.
A day earlier, he posted a caricature depicting the NATO summit throwing Trump a royal welcome, complete with a golden throne and fast-food offerings.
This year’s NATO summit was “much better” than last year’s, as it was not entirely focused on Ukraine, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said.
“Back then, the NATO summit was held in Washington, and NATO was headed in the wrong direction entirely,” Orban stated in an interview posted to his X account. “That summit was about Ukraine, not about how to make ourselves stronger.”
There was almost nothing about Kiev in the event’s final document, he added.
“One could even say we won,” Orban said.
The Hague Summit’s short final declaration consists of five points:
1. A commitment to Article 5, which states that an attack one member state constitutes an attack on all
2. A historic pledge to devote funding in an amount equal to 5% of GDP to military spending by 2035 in order to counter an alleged “long-term threat posed by Russia to Euro-Atlantic security,” as well as to counter terrorism
3. An agreement that 3.5% of that 5% will go to core military expenditures, while 1.5% will be used to strengthen critical infrastructure
4. A commitment to deepen transatlantic military industrial cooperation and remove trade barriers between members
5. The Netherlands was thanked for hosting the event, and future meetings are scheduled to take place in Türkiye in 2026 and, later, in Albania
The latest NATO summit was notable for its brevity, both in duration and in the length of its final declaration, which contained just five succinct points, notes Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs and RT contributor.
While the summit’s central theme was money, another priority was keeping US President Donald Trump satisfied behind the scenes, according to Lukyanov.
“Maximum flattery, maximum praise for his leadership, maximum pomp and royal-worthy settings to please him,” Lukyanov adds.
“Now the key is to keep up this performance, lest he, God forbid, gets upset over something.”
Read the full analysis at @ru_global
US President Donald Trump has boarded Air Force One following the conclusion of the NATO summit.
Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has only played a “supporting role” at this year’s NATO summit, German tabloid Bild has said.
“There was no invitation to the working sessions, no new billions in aid, and no commitment to a NATO perspective for Ukraine” at the event, the outlet wrote.
The summit’s final declaration also “refrained from any commitment” to Ukrainian membership in the US-led military bloc, at the “insistence” of US President Donald Trump, the outlet wrote.
Spain is the only NATO state that wants its military spending at 2% of GDP, Donald Trump has said, promising to pressure Madrid into paying “twice that much.”
“I think Spain’s terrible,” he said. “They’re the only country that won’t pay the full up. They want to stay at 2%.”
“We're negotiating with Spain on a trade deal. We're gonna make them pay twice as much. And I'm actually serious about that,” he said.
US President Donald Trump has said that he has not yet ended the Ukraine conflict because it is “more difficult than people would have any idea.” Trump admitted he had experienced difficulties working with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and with Vladimir Zelensky.
“It's more difficult than people would have any idea. Vladimir Putin has been more difficult,” he told journalists.
“Frankly, I had some problems with Zelensky. You may have read about them.”
In February, a meeting between Trump and Zelensky at the White House devolved into a public shouting match, after which the US president accused the Ukrainian leader of not being interested in working towards peace.
Washington will need to produce more Patriot air defense missiles, as they are “very hard to get,” and the US needs them too, President Donald Trump said when asked whether he could sell the weapons to Ukraine.
“We're going to see if we can make some available. You know, they're very hard to get,” he said.
“We need them, too. We’re supplying them to Israel.”
Donald Trump has said that he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the Ukraine conflict and “get it ended.”
“You know, we had little rough times sometimes. He couldn't have been nicer. I think he'd like to see an end to this,” he told reporters.
“I'm going to speak to Vladimir Putin, see if we can get it ended.”
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was “very affectionate,” Donald Trump said when asked to comment on the former Dutch prime minister calling him “daddy.”
“He likes me, I think he likes me. If he doesn’t, I’ll let you know. I’ll come back and hit him hard, okay?” the US president said.
“He did it very affectionately. Daddy, you're my daddy.”
President Donald Trump has doubled down on comparing the US airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear sites to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“In a certain way, it was so devastating… if you look at Hiroshima, if you look at Nagasaki, you know, that ended a war, too,” he told reporters in the Hague. “This ended a war in a different way, but it was so devastating.”
US President Donald Trump has suggested renaming America’s secretary of defense the secretary of war. “It used to be called Secretary of War,” he has told journalists at the NATO summit in The Hague. “Then we became politically correct, and they called it Secretary of Defense.” The US could adopt the new name in a couple of weeks “because we feel like warriors.”
A conflict between Israel and Iran could be restarted “soon,” US President Donald Trump has told journalists at the NATO summit in The Hague. Both sides are currently “exhausted” by the hostilities, the president stated. “Can it start again? I guess, someday it can. It could maybe start soon,” he added.
Columnist, talk show host and regular RT contributor Rachel Marsden has laid into NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s fawning private correspondence with President Donald Trump, which the latter recently made public.
“Hard to believe this guy was once the prime minister of the Netherlands, ‘Oh President Trump, way to stick it to Europe, man, what a wonderful thing you’ve just done to make Europe subsidize the American military industrial complex to tune of 5% of their GDP’,” she told RT.
While NATO touted the new 5% GDP defense spending target, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez publicly broke ranks, insisting that its current expenditure of 2% is “sufficient, realistic and compatible with the welfare state.”
Trump and Zelensky have wrapped up a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit, several Ukrainian media outlets have reported, adding that talks lasted just under an hour.
Neither of the leaders have spoken to the press since the encounter.
NATO has released a brief five-paragraph-long communique, stating that the bloc’s members “commit to invest 5% of GDP annually on core defense requirements” while reaffirming support for Ukraine.
Ukraine, however, was only mentioned in one sentence, while the document said nothing regarding the prospect of Kiev’s membership in the bloc.
Earlier in the day, speaking next to Trump, Rutte defended the US leader’s use of profanities to denounce reports of the violations of the ceasefire between Israel and Iran, stating that “Daddy sometimes has to use strong language.”
Pressed by CNN on whether he believed Article 5 of the NATO Charter – stipulating that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on the entire bloc – is “subject to interpretation,” Rutte described it as absolutely clear. Still, he sought to downplay the issue, adding that NATO will never go into details regarding the circumstances which could trigger it.
His comments came after Trump suggested that the Article could have “numerous definitions.” In the past, the US leader threatened that he would not defend those NATO members who fail to reach the bloc's joint spending target.
Responding to the question whether NATO’s defense spending hike is more linked to the desire to please Trump rather than to deter the perceived “Russian threat,” Rutte claimed that the US demands for increase of military expenditure date back to President Dwight Eisenhower and are generally a long-term tendency.
Asked whether Rutte’s messages to Trump, which have been seen as filled with obsequious flattery, make him look “weak,” the NATO chief rejected the notion, describing the US leader as “a good friend.” He added that Trump deserves recognition for pushing NATO towards increasing defense spending.
Pivoting to Ukraine, Rutte stressed that Kiev has NATO’s “continued support,” including at least $35 billion in assistance this year. “Our aim is to keep Ukraine in the fight today so that it can enjoy a lasting peace in the future… We will continue to support Ukraine on its irreversible path to NATO membership,” he said, without naming any timeline.
European NATO members and Canada “will do more of the heavy lifting” and take more responsibility for the bloc’s security, according to Rutte.
NATO has approved the so-called Hague Defense Investment Plan, under which the bloc’s members have committed to allocating 5% of their GDP to military spending, Mark Rutte has said, pointing to security “threats” facing the bloc.
He predicted that all NATO members would reach the 2% GDP defense spending target this year. The threshold was first introduced in 2014, following the start of the Ukraine crisis, with many members struggling to reach it for years.
NATO members have laid the foundations for a “more lethal” bloc at the summit, Secretary-General Mark Rutte has told reporters, adding that they “agreed to boost our defense industries” and reaffirmed their “unwavering” support for Ukraine.