NATO Secretary General Rutte: We Do Whatever Is Necessary, Ukraine Will Win

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte met NATO troops at Weisbaden Base, Germany. (Twitter/@SecGenNATO)

JAKARTA - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will not be afraid to face Russian threats, it will continue to provide strong support to Kyiv, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said on his first visit to the alliance's mission to Ukraine in Wiesbaden, Germany, which will take over the coordination of military aid from the United States.

"The message (to Russian President Vladimir Putin) is, we will continue to move forward, we will do whatever is necessary to ensure he will not get what he wants, that Ukraine will win," he told Reuters in a joint interview with German public radio Hessischer Rundfunk on Monday., October 15th.

Rutte spoke at Clay Barracks, the US base that is the headquarters of the new mission, dubbed the NATO Security and Training Assistance for Ukraine (NSATU), which will gradually take over the coordination of Western military aid to Kyiv.

This move is widely seen as an attempt to protect aid mechanisms against the possible return of NATO critic Donald Trump to the White House. Trump, a Republican presidential candidate to fight Kamala Harris of the Democratic Party in the US general election on November 5.

Diplomats admit handing over military aid coordination to NATO may have had a limited impact, given that the US is NATO's dominant force and provides most of the weapons to Ukraine.

NSATU is estimated to have a total power of about 700 personnel, including troops stationed at NATO SHAPE military headquarters in Belgium as well as at logistics centers in Poland and Romania.

The Wiesbaden base is also a venue for US units responsible for the long-range missiles Washington will deploy to Germany temporarily starting in 2026, to counter what the two countries described as a threat posed by Russian missiles stationed near Kaliningrad, about 500 kilometers (311 miles) from Berlin.

On her first visit to Germany as head of NATO, Rutte welcomed the move that Russia had denounced and sparked heated debate over Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic Party.

Rutte, who served as Dutch prime minister from 2010 to 2024, said it was very important for NATO to have the various capabilities needed to prevent Russian threats.

"We are NATO. We are a defensive alliance, we are not offensive. We are not interested in seizing any part of other countries outside NATO territory," he explained.

"As this democratic alliance, the strongest military alliance in world history, serving 1 billion people, we are ready to face any threat. We will never be intimidated by our enemies," he said.