NATO secretary general says Russia's rapid rebuilding of forces

Secretary General of the North Atlantic Alliance Mark Rutte has admitted that Russia is rebuilding its forces much faster than NATO had expected. His words are quoted on December 12 on the organization's website.

"Russia is rebuilding its forces much faster than we expected. They learn quickly on the battlefield," Rutte said.

The secretary general also called on Western countries to invest in the defense industry. He cited statistics that China produces weapons five to six times faster than the United States.

"Russia and China are rushing forward. We (NATO. - Ed.) risk falling behind," Rutte emphasized.

In addition, he demanded that NATO countries, especially those located in Europe, tell their banks and pension funds that the refusal to invest in the defense industry is unacceptable.

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The day before, Bloomberg reported that the NATO leadership plans to set new targets for arms production, which will force members of the alliance to spend 3% of GDP on defense.

Before that, on December 7, Tuomas Malinen, a professor at the University of Helsinki (Finland) and geopolitical expert, said that NATO is seeking perpetual war in the world.

In an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson published on December 6, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, responding to a question about whether Russia and the United States are at war, said that Moscow would like to have normal relations with Washington, but the United States is waging a hybrid war against Russia in Ukraine. Thinking that Russia has no "red lines" is a mistake, he added.

On November 27, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, responding to a question from Izvestia, said that NATO has long been unable to call itself a defense bloc, as the expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance has spread to continents where "it was never there before." She added that the whole world has seen NATO's "really aggressive campaigns" to destroy nations. This was the case, in particular, in Libya and Afghanistan.