France and Germany vowed on Thursday to meet a Nato spending target as Donald Trump restated a threat to hold back US military support for an ally if it under-spends on defence.
The pledges by the defence ministers of France and Germany to spend 2% of GDP on defence came ahead of the Munich security conference this weekend, which is set to be dominated by threats to the West from Russia, China and Iran.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to attend the Munich summit after visits to Paris and Berlin, his office said, alongside British Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron, who stepped up his own warnings on Thursday for pro-Trump lawmakers in Washington to clear US funding for Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin meanwhile claimed that he would prefer to see Joe Biden rather than Donald Trump back in the White House.
"Biden, he's more experienced, more predictable, he's a politician of the old formation," the Russian leader, who has a long history of playing mind-games with Western audiences, said in an interview on state TV.
"But we will work with any US leader whom the American people trust,” he added.
Mr Trump boasted in response: "Putin is not a fan of mine." However, in office, the former US president was far more sympathetic to him than Mr Biden has been, and on Wednesday Mr Trump repeated warnings that he would not defend Nato allies under-spending on defence if they are attacked.
"Look, if they're not going to pay, we're not going to protect. OK?" he said. However, this time he omitted the incendiary encouragement he made last weekend for Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” with any allies who fail to meet the 2% target, which provoked a storm of protest in Europe.
The Republican in 2019 survived an attempt by Democrats in Congress to impeach him for seeking to block Ukraine aid after his alleged “collusion” with Russia in the 2016 election campaign, and was widely slammed for cosying up to Putin at a Helsinki summit in 2018.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the transatlantic alliance's European states would invest a combined total of $380 billion in defence this year, taking their spending as a whole to an estimated 2% of their combined GDP in 2024 compared to 1.85% in 2023.
Eighteen of the 31 Nato members will spend 2% of their GDP on defence this year, he said.
