(5 Jun 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Brussels, Belgium – 5 June 2025
1. Mid of French Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu (left) and German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius (right)
2. Mid of Lithuanian Defence Minister Dovilė Šakalienė
3. Mid of Belgian Defence Minister Theo Francken speaking to Lecornu
4. Mid of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (left) patting US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth’s (middle) back and UK Secretary of Defence John Healey (right)
5. Wide of the NATO defence ministers posing for a group photo
6. Wide pan right of the defence ministers posing for a photo
7. Hegseth and Healey chatting
8. Lecornu speaking with Swedish Defence Minister Pål Jonson
9. Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen speaking to Hegseth and Canadian Defence Minister David McGuinty introducing himself to Hegseth
STORYLINE:
NATO defence minsters posed for a group photograph in Brussels on Thursday as talks began to buy more weapons and military equipment to better defend Europe, the Arctic and North Atlantic.
The “capability targets” lay out goals for each of the 32 nations to purchase priority equipment like air defence systems, long-range missiles, artillery, ammunition, drones and “strategic enablers”, such as air-to-air refuelling, heavy air transport and logistics. Each nation’s plan is classified, so details were scarce.
Spurred on by their own security concerns, European allies and Canada have already been ramping up military spending, including arms and ammunition purchases, since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
At the same time, some allies balk at U.S. demands to invest 5% of their gross domestic product in defence — 3.5% on core military spending and 1.5% on the roads, bridges, airfields and sea ports needed to deploy armies more quickly — when they have already struggled to grow their budgets to 2% of GDP.
The new targets are assigned by NATO based on a blueprint agreed upon in 2023 — the military organization’s biggest planning shakeup since the Cold War — to defend its territory from an attack by Russia or another major adversary.
Under those plans, NATO would aim to have up to 300,000 troops ready to move to its eastern flank within 30 days, although experts suggest the allies would struggle to muster those kinds of numbers.
The member countries are assigned roles in defending NATO territory across three major zones — the high north and Atlantic area, a zone north of the Alps, and another in southern Europe.
AP video by Mark Carlson
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