Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned regional allies Monday that a NATO target to boost defence spending by 2032 would come "too late", as countries arm in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. She was speaking at a summit in Vilnius, attended by Ukraine's leader Volodymyr Zelensky.
The NATO summit in Vilnius on 2 June brought together the alliance’s eastern flank members – the Bucharest Nine –along with Nordic countries.
The one-day summit focused on strengthening security and defense amid ongoing Russian aggression in Ukraine. The meeting comes ahead of the full NATO summit later this month in The Hague.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who attended the Vilnius summit, reiterated his demand to be invited to the June NATO summit, warning that excluding Ukraine would be "a victory for Putin, not over Ukraine, but over NATO."
The NATO summit coincided with the second round of direct peace talks between representatives from Ukraine and Russia in Istanbul, Turkey.
"The key to lasting peace is clear, the aggressor must not receive any reward for war. Putin must get nothing that would justify his aggression," Zelensky told a press conference in Vilnius.
No breakthrough
Ukraine wants concrete Western-backed security guarantees – like NATO protections or troops on the ground – that have been ruled out by Russia.
Moscow has made sweeping demands such as calling for Ukraine to cede territory it still controls, a ban on Kyiv joining NATO, limiting Ukraine's military and ending Western military support.
Zelensky on Monday again rejected those demands, with Kyiv and the West casting Russia's assault as nothing but an "imperialist land grab".
Russia and Ukraine hold first peace talks since 2022
While Ukraine and Russia agreed another large-scale prisoner exchange at talks in Istanbul on Monday, their representatives failed to make a breakthrough on an immediate halt to the fighting.
Ukraine said Moscow had rejected its call for an unconditional ceasefire, offering instead a partial truce of two to three days in some areas of the frontline.
Sharing the burden
Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, NATO has bolstered its eastern defences, with Finland and Sweden overhauling their security policies to join the alliance. Eastern members like Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia – former Soviet republics now in the EU – remain particularly concerned about Russian threats.
France and UK rally allies for potential security force in Ukraine
The push for increased defence spending reflects growing concerns for regional security, but has also fuelled debates within NATO about burden-sharing and the pace of military modernisation.
While 22 of NATO’s 32 members currently meet the existing 2 per cent GDP defence spending target, none meet the proposed 5 per cent goal, which would include both direct military costs and broader security infrastructure such as cybersecurity and logistics.
Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned Monday that NATO’s target to boost defence spending by 2032 would come "too late," as countries in the region rapidly increase their military budgets in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Frederiksen addressed the proposal to raise defence and security spending to 5 per cent of GDP by 2032 – a goal pushed by former US President Donald Trump but not currently met by any NATO member, including the United States.
"I hope that during the NATO summit in the Hague from 24 to 26 June, we will agree on 3.5 per cent for the armed forces and 1.5 per cent on broader defence-related spending," Frederiksen told Danish broadcaster DR. "The question now is whether we will accomplish this before 2032. In my opinion, this is too late."
As Europe pours money into defence, reliance on US remains a sticking point
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has proposed this phased target of 3.5 percent of GDP on direct military spending plus 1.5 per cent on wider security-related expenditures, aiming to finalise the agreement at the upcoming summit in June.
Since taking office in 2019, Frederiksen has significantly increased Denmark’s defence budget – from 1.3 percent of GDP at the start of her term to over three per cent today – but she stressed that more investment is necessary. "That’s not enough. We need to increase defence spending in the years to come," she said.
'Unpredictable threats'
Meanwhile, on Monday the UK published its "Strategic Defence Review" announcing that Britain will build 12 new attack submarines to move the country to "war-fighting readiness" in the face of "Russian aggression" and the changing nature of conflict.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned that "the threat we now face is more serious, more immediate and more unpredictable than at any time since the Cold War," as he launched the review in Glasgow, insisting that UK defence policy will "always be NATO first," and that the UK "will innovate and accelerate innovation at a wartime pace so we can meet the threats of today and of tomorrow."
(with newswires)
