Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged on Friday that he wants NATO to “fall apart,” as he criticized President Trump for urging allies to increase their defense spending.
“[T]hey should completely be falling apart, that will help,” Putin said during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. “But we don’t see that falling [apart] just yet.”
Putin was responding to a question from NBC’s Megyn Kelly, who asked if “squabbling about NATO” is good for Russia. The exchange comes after President Trump attended a NATO summit in Europe and declined to explicitly endorse the NATO treaty provision requiring mutual defense, as he urged NATO members to increase spending and suggested allies also “owe massive amounts of money from past years.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced after the summit that the United States is no longer a reliable partner for Europe.
“We are seeing the way the military’s infrastructure is expanding [toward] our borders and this is something which cannot but concern us,” Putin said during the panel.
Those remarks fueled criticism of Trump on Friday, as skeptics of his policies regarding NATO took Putin’s statement as confirmation of their views. “Sometimes I admire Putin[‘s] bluntless,” former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul tweeted at Trump. “You are advancing Putin’s agenda. Clear as day.”
Putin emphasized that the substance of the squabbling is bad for Russian policy, however, as he criticized Trump’s call for increased spending at the latest summit.
“The United States demand from their allies to raise their military spending, and simultaneously they say that NATO is not going to attack anybody,” he said. “But if you’re not going to attack anybody, why should you increase your military spending?”
NATO and Western-leaning European states have been increasingly concerned about the threat of Russian aggression since 2014, when Putin annexed Crimea and backed a separatist movement in eastern Ukraine. Those moves resulted in sanctions imposed on Russia by Europe and the United States.
“We would hope that President Trump heeds the advice of his international allies and continues to hold Russia accountable for its actions and forces it to come to the table to negotiate a peaceful resolution to a war the Russian leaders unnecessarily provoked,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the civilian leader of NATO from 2009 to 2014 and a former prime minister of Denmark, said following Trump’s election.
Putin and a small minority of American lawmakers maintain that Russia intervened in Ukraine on behalf of the legitimate government against a western-backed coup. “I don’t believe Putin started this,” Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., told the Washington Examiner. “I believe the West started it when they overthrew a pro-Russian democratically-elected government that was on Russia’s border.”
Trump’s team has retained the Ukraine-related sanctions, despite initial hints he might be open to reversing them upon taking office.
“As we have repeated at every ministerial and summit since Russia launched its campaign of aggression against Ukraine, NATO allies stand firm in our support of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in March.
