NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Monday offered crucial backing for President Donald Trump’s latest effort to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Momentum has appeared to grow for a deal after Trump’s team held talks in Geneva over the weekend with Ukrainian and European leaders, hammering out some of the details in the president’s 28-point peace proposal that had given partners such as Germany pause, due to concerns it favored Russia.
Rutte weighed in following the Geneva talks, saying the Trump administration’s proposal had “some elements [that] had to be changed, but there was also good stuff in the plan.” The NATO chief hailed Trump’s leadership in jumpstarting the process, saying, “It always takes two to tango, but it starts with a plan, and it starts with a president, President Trump, who wants to end this.”
“It is one of the more difficult ones [wars for Trump to end], but I’m sure that we will get this done,” Rutte said during the Fox & Friends interview.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll have led Trump’s team of negotiators in seeking to align Russia, Ukraine, and Europe on a plan that would resolve the current conflict and keep war from breaking out again.
Rutte this week stressed the importance of keeping Russia at bay, echoing arguments made by other European allies about not sacrificing Ukraine’s sovereignty at the price of a quick deal. The “end state” of the talks “is a sovereign Ukraine going forward, a strong nation, and Russia never trying again to attack it,” he told Radio Free Europe during another interview Monday.
“I know one thing about the Russians in general and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin specifically. Whenever you make an agreement, you have to make sure it is in his interest to keep to it,” Rutte said. “So that’s why it is so important that whenever a peace deal is reached on Ukraine, that he will never try again. And he will never try again when he knows that the consequences for him will be devastating if he tries to invade Ukraine again after a long-term ceasefire or, preferably, a peace deal.”
“Obviously, some of the elements have to be really thought through,” Rutte added in reference to Trump’s 28-point plan, adding that “clearly as a base it served its purpose yesterday to get the two parties to really dialogue.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz echoed the sentiment, welcoming the “interim result” of the Geneva talks and saying the U.S. proposal “has now been modified in significant parts.”
“The next step must be that Russia must come to the table,” the German leader said in Angola, where he was attending a summit between African and European Union countries. “This is a laborious process. It will move forward at most in smaller steps this week. I do not expect there to be a breakthrough this week.”
Rutte suggested Russia might finally be in a place where Putin feels backed into making a deal.
“The Russians are indeed not in a good place. Russians have gained 1% of Ukrainian territory so far this year, so this is a few yards,” he told Fox News.
Russian officials were favorable to the original 28-point plan. They haven’t yet seen revisions made during the Geneva talks, a Kremlin spokesman said, adding that there are currently no plans for the U.S. and Russian delegations to meet this week. The Russian side remains “open for such contacts,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov continued, with his comments coming as the premier international group of Ukrainian allies, known as the “coalition of the willing,” plans to hold discussions about the plan on Tuesday.
Rubio said Sunday that Driscoll and others have held extensive engagement in Kyiv with Ukrainian stakeholders to build a better idea of what the key sticking points are. Roughly three weeks ago, the Trump administration began floating the “foundational … ongoing working document” by both Ukraine and Russia to get their input, he told reporters, saying that the talks in Geneva over the weekend held the goal of seeking to narrow the 28 points “that were open items.”
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“We have achieved that today in a very substantial way,” Rubio continued. “Like any final agreement, this will have to be agreed upon by the presidents, and there are a couple of issues that we need to continue to work on.”
“I don’t want to declare victory or finality here. There’s still some work to be done,” he added, “but think the report today is that … it was probably the most productive day we have had on this issue, maybe in the entirety of our engagement.”
