NATO chief tells BBC that Trump’s comments are like a ‘family dispute’.

“First, in the six weeks between the end of February and mid-April, five thousand aircraft were flown from European bases based on bilateral agreements until a cease-fire was implemented.”

NATO’s Nordic countries have pointed out that Russia’s massive fleet of nuclear-armed submarines on the Kola Peninsula, off Russia’s Arctic coast, acts as an early warning system for Washington.

“You don’t want Russian nuclear submarines to end up on the coast of the United States,” he says. “As NATO, we will deter together. So for all these reasons, we are 32 countries and nations together because we need each other.”

This NATO summit was occasionally disrupted, but mainly to turn European governments’ pledges to give more money to defense into concrete action.

The aim is to boost the continent’s industrial capacity to match the threat posed by Russia’s vast arsenal of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles.

While some countries, such as Britain, may not be able to set a path to spending 3 percent of GDP on defense by 2030, Ruth is clearly pleased with the increases since the 2025 summit in her hometown of The Hague.

“Today we have taken the treasury,” he tells me, “a quarter of a trillion (dollars) additional spending by the Canadians and the Europeans in two years. It is very shocking. So we are proposing, and now we must increase the production of the defense industry by making progress and continuing to support Ukraine.”

So I ask, if Russia were to launch a land invasion somewhere in 2030, as some are predicting, would NATO be ready?

Again, his confidence is convincing. It’s probably the most frequently asked question.

“We’ll never be ready,” he replies. “We are ready now, we are ready anytime in 2030. We are defending. We will never attack another country, but every adversary knows that if they try to attack us, we are ready. We will defend ourselves.”