During a press conference on Monday, North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Mark Rutte was asked how much the Europeans were willing to pay in defense of Ukraine.
00:00Is there a feeling on what the Europeans are willing to pay for, and it sounds like, are you ruling out the U.S. paying for some additional weapons through Drawdown Authority?
00:09Shall I try to cancel it? Because basically what the President is saying, that he is willing, of course taking consideration what the U.S. needs itself, so it's not that you can have a shopping list and you can order whatever you want, because the U.S. has to make sure that the U.S. keeps its hands on what the U.S. needs, also to keep the whole world safe, because in the end you are the police agent of the whole world.
00:29You are the most powerful nation on Earth, the most powerful military on Earth. But given that, the U.S. has decided to indeed massively supply Ukraine with what is necessary, through NATO, Europeans 100% paying for that.
00:42And what we have been doing over the last couple of days is talking with countries, and I just mentioned to ones who in the first wave immediately said, we want to chip in. And then you are really talking about big numbers.
00:53Take Germany visiting today, they are really talking about big numbers.
00:58Can we get some clarity over?
01:00I will say that I spoke with Germany, spoke with most of the larger countries, and they are really enthusiastic about this.
01:09They want to, and you know, they're willing to go very far.
01:11I will tell you, you know, as per your question, how far would I go?
01:15They want to go very far. They don't want this to happen.
01:18That's why I think from Putin's standpoint, it would really be good. He gets the country, his economy is doing very poorly, and he's got to get his economy back. He's got to save his economy. He could save his country in a sense.
01:29But the economy can destroy, destroyed a lot of countries over the years. He wants to get that economy back. And you know, he's got a great country for trading and other things. If they could use the assets instead of war, he's got some tremendous potential. That's what I would say.
