NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has stepped down from the role and handed it over to former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
In a final interview, Stoltenberg, 65, said members of the NATO alliance should not be deterred from giving more military aid to Ukraine by the “reckless Russian nuclear rhetoric” coming from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The United States and its allies have been considering whether to let Ukraine use conventional missiles supplied by NATO countries against targets deep inside Russia.
“What we have seen is a pattern of reckless Russian nuclear rhetoric and messaging, and this fits into that pattern,” Stoltenberg said during an interview at NATO headquarters, near the Belgian capital, Brussels.
“Every time we have stepped up our support with new types of weapons—battle tanks, long-range fires, or F-16s—the Russians have tried to prevent us.
“They have not succeeded and also this latest example should not prevent NATO allies from supporting Ukraine.”
Stoltenberg is NATO’s 13th secretary-general and has been in the job for 10 years, a tenure exceeded only by Dutchman Joseph Luns, who held the job from 1971 until 1984.
He is now passing the baton to 57-year-old Rutte, who was prime minister of the Netherlands from 2010 until July this year.
Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, took on the job in October 2014, a few months after Russia annexed Crimea and encouraged separatists to rise in the Donbas region of Ukraine.
NATO was created in 1949 when the United States, the UK, and France sought to create a strong military alliance against the Soviet Union as the Cold War began.
NATO appeared to have lost its raison d'être in the 1990s when the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia, under Boris Yeltsin, warmed to Western overtures.
But when Putin came to power, he sought to reexert the Kremlin’s power over former Soviet republics, especially Georgia and Ukraine.
Rutte takes over NATO with the war in Ukraine still in the balance.
A Ukrainian incursion in the Kursk region in August has slowed, and the use of troops taken from the Donetsk front has appeared to have weakened Kyiv’s position near Pokrovsk.
The U.S. presidential election in November could play a crucial role in the direction the war in Ukraine takes.
During the debate, Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said she believed that Ukraine’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity” must be upheld.
Rutte has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine as a Dutch prime minister and has urged European leaders to “stop whining” about Trump and concentrate on defending the continent against Moscow and its allies.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin knew Rutte well from previous meetings.
“Our expectations are that the North Atlantic alliance will continue to work in the same direction in which it has been working,” Peskov told reporters on Oct. 1.
“At one time, there were hopes for the possibility of building good pragmatic relations—at least, such a dialogue was conducted—but subsequently we know that The Netherlands took a rather irreconcilable position, a position on the complete exclusion of any contacts with our country.
“Therefore, we do not think that anything significantly new will happen in the alliance’s policy.”
The article, which said it was “debunking Russian disinformation,” said it was a “myth” that Ukraine would not become a member of NATO.
“NATO supports every country’s right to choose its own security arrangements, including Ukraine. NATO’s door remains open,” it said. “NATO allies decide on NATO membership. Russia does not have a veto.”
