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6/24/2025, 3:20:54 PM
A Putin War With NATO Would Cost the World $1.5 Trillion
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European officials tracking the ramp up of Vladimir Putin’s military are wrestling with a threat that would have been scarcely plausible a few years ago: war with Russia.
Russia is churning out artillery shells, drones and missiles at a rate that will soon surpass the needs of its troops in Ukraine. The US and Israel’s attack on Iran, a Kremlin ally, has dealt another blow to global stability, even as Trump has announced a tentative ceasefire. And Putin is sounding emboldened.
As allied leaders gather for a summit in The Hague beginning Tuesday, Trump is expected to reaffirm the US commitment to NATO’s mutual-defense clause, at least according to a draft statement from NATO allies ahead of the meeting. Trump administration officials have also said repeatedly that they’d defend every inch of its territory.
But regardless of what Trump says, European leaders aren’t convinced they can bank on his commitments — at the Group of Seven summit in Canada this month, he asked why Russia wasn’t attending.
A war on NATO territory remains unlikely — not least because Russia doesn’t, for now, have the capacity and probably would not want a war on two fronts. But some Russian generals and senior officials have said publicly that their imperial ambitions don’t end with Ukraine and Putin himself laid claim to at least the whole of Ukraine last week.
“I consider Russians and Ukrainians as one people, and in this sense all of Ukraine is ours,” Putin said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. “We have a saying, or parable — wherever the Russian soldier treads is ours.”
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte suggested that Russia may be in a position to consider such an attack on the alliance within five years, echoing the assessments of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and several European intelligence agencies.
1/?
European officials tracking the ramp up of Vladimir Putin’s military are wrestling with a threat that would have been scarcely plausible a few years ago: war with Russia.
Russia is churning out artillery shells, drones and missiles at a rate that will soon surpass the needs of its troops in Ukraine. The US and Israel’s attack on Iran, a Kremlin ally, has dealt another blow to global stability, even as Trump has announced a tentative ceasefire. And Putin is sounding emboldened.
As allied leaders gather for a summit in The Hague beginning Tuesday, Trump is expected to reaffirm the US commitment to NATO’s mutual-defense clause, at least according to a draft statement from NATO allies ahead of the meeting. Trump administration officials have also said repeatedly that they’d defend every inch of its territory.
But regardless of what Trump says, European leaders aren’t convinced they can bank on his commitments — at the Group of Seven summit in Canada this month, he asked why Russia wasn’t attending.
A war on NATO territory remains unlikely — not least because Russia doesn’t, for now, have the capacity and probably would not want a war on two fronts. But some Russian generals and senior officials have said publicly that their imperial ambitions don’t end with Ukraine and Putin himself laid claim to at least the whole of Ukraine last week.
“I consider Russians and Ukrainians as one people, and in this sense all of Ukraine is ours,” Putin said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. “We have a saying, or parable — wherever the Russian soldier treads is ours.”
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte suggested that Russia may be in a position to consider such an attack on the alliance within five years, echoing the assessments of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and several European intelligence agencies.
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