Trump: If NATO Countries Don’t Pay Fair Share, US Won’t Defend

By Tyler Durden Zero Hedge

Update (1535 ET): President Trump has on Thursday afternoon warned allies that if NATO countries don’t pay their fair share they won’t be protected. His words come as European leaders, as well as some U.S. politicians, are worried the Atlantic alliance is becoming weaker than ever, and that Article 5 collective defense is in peril.

Trump has repeatedly lashed out at NATO countries not meeting their current two percent spending goal while the unfair burden falls on United States, which spends 3.4% cent of its GDP on defense.

And as France’s Macron starts some rare nuclear saber-rattling, Trump responded…

At the same time Russia’s President Putin has made clear on Thursday that he’s not going to make any concessions in potential near-future negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.

This is especially as by most accounts Moscow is ‘winning’ the war…

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Update (1222 ET): The White House has paused both weapons shipments to Kiev as well as intelligence-sharing, given that so far President Zelensky has refused the sign Trump’s minerals deal while complaining it doesn’t contain clear and firm security guarantees.

Rather than back down, it appears Trump has just piled on yet another big demand on Ukraine, ramping up the pressure even more. The US is now pressing Ukraine to achieve a ‘quick ceasefire’ to go with the minerals deal, Bloomberg reports Thursday:

European officials have been told that President Donald Trump wants to link the proposed US-Ukraine minerals deal to demands for Kyiv to commit to a quick ceasefire with Russia, according to people familiar with the matter.

Washington has indicated that Trump is ready to finalize the agreement on natural resources, which has been on hold since his Oval Office fallout with Volodymyr Zelenskiy last week, on condition the Ukrainian leader agrees to tangible path for a truce and talks with Moscow, the people said.

This is a huge development, which could see peace talks come together quickly – as Ukraine possesses little or no leverage with either Moscow or Washington at this point (only now heavily relying on Europe, which can’t fill the heavy lifting previously done by the US) – or else this will see the US and Ukraine relationship suffer total collapse. And this would see the US weapon stoppage become permanent.

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For readers of independent media – or anyone who’s been paying any level of attention for that matter – this is nothing new, but this week marked the first time a sitting US Secretary of State Described the Ukraine-Russia conflict as a proxy war.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a Wednesday interview with Fox News described that “It’s been very clear from the beginning that [President Donald Trump] views this as a protracted, stalemated conflict.”

“And frankly, it’s a proxy war between nuclear powers – the United States, helping Ukraine, and Russia – and it needs to come to an end,” he followed with.

He was defending the White House’s ongoing talks and pursuit of a rapid peace deal with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. He also urged others not to sabotage the process, including the Ukrainians.

“President Zelenskyy unfortunately made the decision to challenge the Vice President and start questioning whether diplomacy is even possible; in essence, sabotaging and undermining the President’s plan,” Rubio described of last Friday’s visit to the White House of the Ukrainian leader.

Days prior to this interview, Rubio similarly told ABC he hopes for a ‘reset’ with Moscow. “We have to bring [Russia] to the table. You’re not going to bring them to the table if you’re calling them names, if you’re being antagonistic. That’s just the president’s instincts from years and years and years of putting together deals,” Rubio argued.

Before being tapped as Trump’s top global diplomat, Rubio’s rhetoric was much more hawkish on Russia and Putin, but he’s quickly got on board the president’s plan for peace.

The Kremlin on Thursday responded to Rubio identifying the proxy war nature of the conflict, pointing to a war involving the whole of the Western allies.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, “We can and want to agree with it, and we agree with it. That’s the way it is. We have said this repeatedly. We have said that this is actually a conflict between Russia and the collective West. And the main country of the collective West is the United States of America.”

Peskov added, “So it is absolutely in line with the position that our president and foreign minister have repeatedly expressed. We have said this repeatedly, and yes, we agree that it is time to stop this conflict and this war.”

While not widely acknowledged early in the conflict, the Western mainstream media has in the last year belatedly began covering this proxy war side of it, including the CIA’s covert role even going years prior to 2022.

Last year the NY Times documented a major US program was established a decade ago which three different American presidents. The Times said the CIA program to modernize Ukraine’s intelligence services had “transformed” the former Soviet state and its capabilities into “Washington’s most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today.”

This included the agency having secretly trained and equipped Ukrainian intelligence officers spanning back to just after the 2014 Maidan coup events, as well constructing a network of 12 secret bases along the Russian border—work which began over eight years ago. 

These intelligence bases, from which Russian commanders’ communications can be swept up and Russian spy satellites monitored, are still being used launch and track cross-border drone and missile attacks on Russian territory. That is, perhaps until this week, as Trump has ordered a halt to intelligence-sharing with Kiev amid worsening relations and a spat with Zelensky, who has been resistant to signing the minerals deal.

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