Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte has mocked Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov over his recent remarks about the military alliance.
“He is foreign minister of Russia, I think since the birth of Jesus Christ? And since then nothing useful has come out of his mouth. So let’s not pay too much attention to Mr Lavrov," Rutte said commenting on Fox News. Rutte’s comments followed Lavrov’s remarks on June 29 that “increase in the budget of NATO countries will lead to the collapse of this organization”. The Kremlin responded to Rutte’s statement, with Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova saying that "Lavrov has worked for so many years not for nothing, since he made the NATO secretary-general remember Jesus Christ.”
It should be noted that at the NATO summit on 25 June in The Hague, member states discussed boosting defence budgets and reaffirmed Russia as a long-term threat. Rutte has hailed US leader Donald Trump’s push for enhanced NATO defence spending as a "huge foreign policy win.”
