NATO will not be cowed by Russian threats but keep up its strong support of Kyiv, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said on his first visit to the alliance’s Ukraine mission in Wiesbaden, set to take over the coordination of military aid from the US.
“The message (to Russian President Vladimir Putin) is that we will continue, that we will do what’s necessary to make sure that he will not get his way, that Ukraine will prevail,” he told in an interview.
Rutte spoke at Clay Barracks, the US base hosting the headquarters of the new mission, dubbed NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine (NSATU), which will gradually assume the coordination of Western military aid to Kyiv.
Speaking in one of 12 green tents that house NSATU as it is built up, Rutte earlier on Monday addressed allied troops from more than a dozen nations already working on the mission that will, at a later stage, move into a nearby hangar and be complemented by Ukrainian troops.
The Wiesbaden base is also home to the US unit in charge of long-range missiles that Washington will deploy to Germany temporarily from 2026, to counter what both countries describe as a threat posed by Russian missiles stationed as close as Kaliningrad, some 500 kilometers (311 miles) from Berlin.
On his first visit to Germany as NATO chief, Rutte welcomed the step that has been denounced as a provocation by Russia and sparked a heated debate in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social-Democrat Party.
Rutte, who was prime minister of the Netherlands from 2010 until 2024, said NATO needed to have the full range of capabilities needed to deter a Russian threat.
