Trump says will 'absolutely' consider leaving Nato if US not treated 'fairly'
- Last updated: December 8, 2024 | 20:19
US President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview aired on Sunday he would "absolutely" consider leaving Nato if allies didn't "pay their bills."
"They have to pay their bills," Trump told NBC's "Meet the Press," saying he would "absolutely" consider taking the United States out of the alliance unless members are "treating us fairly."
Trump has long complained that European and the Canadian governments in the mutual-defense bloc are freeloading on military spending by the US, by far the most powerful partner in Nato.
Nato and its member governments say a majority of countries in the bloc are now hitting voluntary targets for military spending, due in part to pressure from Trump in his first term.
Trump on Sunday also called for an immediate cease-fire in Russia's war with Ukraine and the president-elect renewed warnings that he was open to pulling the United States out of Nato.
Trump made his cease-fire proposal after a weekend meeting in Paris with French and Ukrainian leaders, claiming in a social media post that Kyiv "would like to make a deal" to end the more than 1,000-day war.
The Kremlin responded that it was open to negotiations, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky cautioned that any deal would have to pave the way to a lasting peace. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said Russia and Ukraine have each lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers in a war that "should never have started."
"There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too many lives are being needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed," Trump said.
He urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to act to bring an end to the fighting. Trump's remarks came after the meeting Saturday with Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron that Zelensky described as "constructive."
In a post Sunday on the Telegram messaging app, Zelensky cautioned that Ukraine needs a "just and robust peace, that Russians will not destroy within a few years."
Agencies