By New York Post (World News) | Created at 2025-03-16 21:15:09 | Updated at 2025-03-17 05:36:15
8 hours ago
President Trump has finally forced Europe to arm itself and “get serious” about defense after years of dithering under the Biden administration, says a Baltic defense official.
Vaidotas Urbelis, defense policy director at Lithuania’s Ministry of Defense, warned that Russia only understands negotiating “with a gun on the table” — and that Europe must keep the pressure on the Kremlin.
The emergency leaders’ summit in Brussels earlier this month showed that “Europe should be primarily responsible for European defense,” Vaidotas Urbelis, defense policy director at Lithuania’s Ministry of Defense told The Post.
Speaking from Poland’s capital Warsaw, Urbelis praised Trump for “speeding things up” and trying to bring about an end to the war in Ukraine after years of “delayed decisions” under former President Joe Biden.
“What the current US administration is doing, I think pretty successfully, is speeding things up,” he said. “In political life, people tend to delay decision — ‘OK, maybe we’ll do it after one year, maybe after two years.’
“And the current language of the US administration says to Europe, ‘Do it now, make decisions right now, because that’s your responsibility.’
“So I would say the major threat is here, everyone understands it, but the speed and urgency of making things happen, that has changed,” Urbelis added.
Lithuania, a country of less than 3 million people that borders the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and the pro-Putin regime in Belarus, vowed in January to boost its defense spending to up to 6% of its gross domestic product by next year.
Citing “Russian military aggression,” the “historic decision” was announced by Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nausėda, as his country became the first NATO nation to sign up to Trump’s call for all member states to reach 5% defense spending. The country spends just over 3% of its GDP on defense.
The Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — which were formerly part of the Soviet Union — have been among the most aggressive NATO members in ramping up their defensive capabilities because they view themselves as the most vulnerable targets of Russia’s aggression.
But even combined, their spending is just a drop in the bucket because of their small populations. All together they shelled out about $5.2 billion for defense in 2024 — less than a half the cost of a single US aircraft carrier.
None of the countries have even a single fighter jet.
As as a result, Urbelis advocates for a united front against Russia.
He echoed warnings that the only way to negotiate with Russia is with a “gun on the table,” as set out by Lithuania’s Defense Minister Dovilė Šakalienė in a Fox News interview this week.
“When you talk to Russia, it’s not like normal negotiations, that you offer something and your opponent also makes concessions and you agree in the middle,” Urbelis explained.
“It’s not the way Russia negotiates. If you offer something, they will ask for more. If you offer concessions, they understand that as a sign of weakness. That’s why you must put huge pressure on them, militarily, economically, financially, so that they agree on a solution that is acceptable to all. That’s what we mean by negotiating by having a gun on the table, because they don’t understand the language.”
“Northern Europe is moving extremely fast,” Urbelis said. Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the United Kingdom, because we are most exposed and we know what Russia means. We have lived with Russians for centuries. We know how they behave and how they negotiate.”
But he warned that the rest of the continent needed to catch up.
“The most important kind of test will be numbers. What countries put on the table,” he said. “If we’re still below 2% [of GDP], that’s not serious.”
At the same time, he stressed unity, adding, “We should not sacrifice unity. Because what Russia wants is to divide NATO.”
The question now turns to what the US involvement might look like in a Ukraine peace deal, whether NATO countries will be willing to put boots on the ground in Ukraine, and what that force might look like.
“What is even more important is not just the number of troops, but what are the rules of engagement,” Urbelis said. “If someone was to engage these forces, the response must be immediate and violent.
“That’s why we need as many countries as possible and some kind of US involvement. People use that word, US backstop. But Russians would not dare to violate that agreement because what Russia is good at is violating all cease-fires and all peace deals,” he continued.
“So not for a second can we assume that Russians will honor this cease-fire or peace agreement. Not for a second.”
