No, NATO chief Mark Rutte didn’t say Ukraine is an ‘American territory’

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No, NATO chief Mark Rutte didn’t say Ukraine is an ‘American territory’  Russian disinformation misquotes Rutte as saying Ukraine belongs to the United States.  READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/07/10/no-nato-chief-mark-rutte-didnt-say-ukraine-is-an-american-territory  Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages

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00:00No, the NATO chief did not say that Ukraine is an American territory.

00:07A video is circulating online claiming that the NATO Secretary General Mark Rutter

00:13described Ukraine as American territory.

00:18Here's one example of the video being shared on Instagram.

00:21A closer look reveals it was taken from an interview Rutter gave

00:26during the NATO summit in The Hague on the 24th of June.

00:30Here's what Rutter really said.

00:32And then we have to make sure that whatever the long-term ceasefire

00:36or the peace deal on Ukraine will be, that it is lasting, that it is durable,

00:41that Vladimir, Vladimir, which Putin, will never ever again try to catch one square kilometer

00:47or for the Americans, one square mile of Ukrainian territory.

00:51The Russian subtitles on the manipulated video misquote Rutter.

00:57The captions claim he said NATO needs to ensure Putin will never again try to take away

01:04a single square kilometer of Ukrainian territory from the Americans.

01:09But in reality, Rutter only referred to the Americans when referring to square miles,

01:15as it's the imperial system of measurement that's most typically used by the Americans.

01:20We detected the first instances of disinformation in Russian on Telegram.

01:25It has also been amplified widely on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X in other European languages.

01:34The posts have been seen millions of times, according to our estimates.

01:38This clearly fits in the playbook of Russian disinformation operations.

01:43The manipulated video aims to corroborate one of Putin's stated justifications for invading Ukraine,

01:51namely the claim that Ukraine is not neutral and that NATO and the US are trying to gain a foothold in its territory.

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