Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. The distractions not going away, But one individual that is hyper focus on the actual policies that were discussed this week is of course the NATO Secretary General Yain Stoltenberg, and this was his final NATO summit. You're going to be retiring in the fall. You've been at the Helm for a decade, so you've seen a lot. We're going to get into some of those distractions that were happening at the summit, but I
want to get into some of the policies. We just heard President Biden there talking about the limits they've placed on Ukraine about striking deeper into Russia. He basically said, they don't want to give HM capacity to hit the Kremlin, but Celenzi is asking to attack Russian jets on Russian air bases that strike Ukrainian cities. Do you get the sense that the US doesn't trust Zelenski? Well, First of.
All, the US and Old Alas have loosened the restrictions that have imposed on the US solo their weapons that have delighted to Ukraine. So Ukraine it's not able to also strike against the military targets inside the Russia and we need to remember what this is. This is a where Russian Russia has attacked the Ukraine. That's violation national law. Ukraine has the right, according to national law, to defend themselves and that includes also striking legitimate military targets inside
the territory of Russia and allies. Some allies have given them that permission or the allies have some restrictions, but they have been loosened up a bit.
But of course the most important ally sending the most weaponry is the United States, and they've only said you can go about forty kilometers. But to really Zelensky's point is to really start to push back the Russians and be defensive, they need to get on top of it, meaning going maybe three hundred kilometers. Do you think I mean you were part of these discussions. Do you think
there's something the new United States? We've seen them before drag their feet and then make decisions that Lenskap is pushing for. Could you see them coming around to this?
This was an issue that was discussed at the Natal summit, and again some allies have no resictions on the use of the weapons they have delivered. Others have resictions but have loosened them. The US is of course important, but half of the military support to Ukraine comes from a
non US allies comes from Europe and Canada. So when it comes to Ukraine and the Europeans have really stepped up, and with the decision we made at the net To summit to have a long term pledge and to have a formula for burnishing, we will ensure that those in the future European allies and kinda will provide half of the military support because they have half of the economic strength of the alliance.
Ukraine didn't get the formal invitation they were helping for, so they are still at the gates, knocking on the door and they're not letting too NATO just yet. While they do this, though, it unnerves putin do you think they're in a sense almost the worst position this security purgatory because they're still stuck in the middle because they're not yet alliance. But even asking to be an alliance really underscores the issue that they're having with their neighbor next door.
At the summit allows we're very clear that Ukraine will become a member. We also stated that this is a reversible path towards membership. But actually as important, or perhaps even more important than the language in the statement we agreed, is that actually we took actions to move Ukraine closer to membership. We established a Native Command with seven hundred personnel to organize the provisional training and military support to Ukraine.
We do this long term pledge, and we stepped up the work to do what we call interoperability, to ensure that Ukrainian forces are fully interoperable with NATO forces. These are concrete actions that actually helps them to prevail, to help Ukraine to prevail as a certain independent nation in Europe, and all of that moves them closer to membership, and then when the when the time is right and als agreed, they will become members straight away.
As you know, politics overshadowed this summit. Everyone was talking about, if not officially, unofficially President Biden's age as the native Secretary General who's worked with both of these US presidents who are the candidates for November. Do you see potential change in the future US commitment to the Alliance?
I expect that the United States will remain a strong NATO ally also in the future for at least three reasons. One is that this is in the US security and interest to have a strong NATO. In NATO, the United States has something Russia and China doesn't have more than thirty different an allies. Second, it's very strong bipartisan support in the United States for NATO in the public wess in your opinion polls also confirming that, but also in the US Congress. I met congress men from both parties
and they will express some strong support to NATO. The main criticism from former President Trump and others have actually not been against NATO. It has been against NATO allies not spending enough on NATO, and that has changed or just during the last years, we have seen significant increase in number of allies spending at least two percent of GDP on defense, which is a native allies.
So is your expectation to ignore, potentially your expectations that Trump's rhetoric will not match his policies on the ground.
Well, I worked with him when he was from president last time, and again I expect that the United States will remain a strong NATO ally because this also makes the United States safer and stronger. The United States is big twenty five percent of the world's GDP, but toget with NATO allies, we are fifty percent of the world's GDP, twice as big, fifty percent of the world's military right,
and this makes the United States stronger. And the main criticism the fact that your pen allies didn't spend that has really changed the twenty three allows penny two percent, and those allots are not yet a two percent, have a promise to be there soon. So this has really improved, not least because the criticism from the United States was valid and Europeans have heard the call and have stepped up.
Jen Centerburg, thank you so much for your time. That was of course John Jen Stoltenberg, the outgoing NATO chief