NATO chief ‘very happy’ with Trump’s sanctions threat to Russia

NATO chief ‘very happy’ with Trump’s sanctions threat to Russia


Mark Rutte, incoming secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), during a transition ceremony at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. Mark Rutte, the affable and meticulous former Dutch premier, has a daunting task ahead to keep the defense alliance a global force.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

NATO’s Secretary-General Mark Rutte hailed newly inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump’s warning on Wednesday that Russia could expect more tariffs and sanctions if it did not end the war in Ukraine.

“I was very, very happy with the position of Trump to put more sanctions on Russia. We know that the Russian economy is doing terribly bad[ly], and the sanctions will help,” he told CNBC on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.”

He expressed hopes that Europe will now also “step up” with sanctions in a bid to “choke off the Russian economy” and lessen Moscow’s war coffers.

“Trump is right, Ukraine is closer to Europe, but Trump is also right that it is a geopolitical conflict so I’m sure the U.S. wants it to end with a good and strong deal,” Rutte added.

Trump on Wednesday said that, if no deal were reached to end the Russia-Ukraine war soon, the U.S. would “have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries.”

“Let’s get this war, which never would have started if I were President, over with!,” Trump said on the Truth Social platform. “We can do it the easy way, or the hard way – and the easy way is always better.”

Trump has previously boasted that he could end the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours” of being elected, as well as threatening to cut military funding for Kyiv. Concerns have mounted in Europe that a financially and weapons-deprived Ukraine could be pushed into a bad peace deal involving territorial concessions to Russia.

February will mark the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion, and while war fatigue has grown among some allies, the war has shown no sign of ending soon with Russia looking to make gains, and Ukraine prevent further territorial losses, ahead of any possible peace talks.

When asked for his current assessment of the war between Ukraine and Russia, NATO chief Rutte said “at the moment, it is moving not in the right direction.”

“At the moment, it [the war] is moving not in the right direction, [the frontlines] should be moving eastwards and it moving westwards … We have to change that, we have to change the trajectory of the war,” he said.

This breaking news story is being updated.

Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook. 





Source

The bubble in people searching for ‘AI bubble’ has burst — what that means for the stocks
World

The bubble in people searching for ‘AI bubble’ has burst — what that means for the stocks

Retail investors’ fear of an “AI bubble” appears to have fallen off after spiking this summer. It could mean the stocks have further to balloon before they ultimately top out. The number of U.S. and worldwide web searches for the term “AI bubble” peaked on Aug. 20 and Aug. 21, respectively, according to Google Trends […]

Read More
Lyft CEO left Microsoft in the 90s to join a tiny startup called Amazon—here’s how Jeff Bezos convinced him
World

Lyft CEO left Microsoft in the 90s to join a tiny startup called Amazon—here’s how Jeff Bezos convinced him

In 1996, David Risher told Bill Gates he was quitting his management role at Microsoft, then already one of the world’s largest companies with annual revenue of nearly $8.7 billion, to take a job at a “tiny, little bookstore online,” called Amazon. “It wasn’t an entirely rational move,” Risher, who is now CEO of Lyft, […]

Read More
Inside the uranium plant at the center of U.S. plans to expand nuclear power
World

Inside the uranium plant at the center of U.S. plans to expand nuclear power

EUNICE, NEW MEXICO — Paul Lorskulsint was a shift manager at a brand new uranium enrichment facility deep in the American Southwest when catastrophe struck Japan in 2011. A massive tsunami and earthquake had caused a severe accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Thousands of miles away in Eunice, New Mexico, Lorskulsint turned […]

Read More