Using the ruins of Kyiv as a PR backdrop, the NATO boss talks about how hard he is working and pretends that a Ukraine peace deal is just around the corner. Which he knows it’s not. Beyond the pale.
BY MICHAEL ANDERSEN
So, NATO boss Mark ‘Daddy’ Rutte decided to make himself a nice little publicity video. In Kyiv. As you do.
You know, it happens quite often to me that Facebook or other social media flag a video I post about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as ‘against our community standards’ – because the video shows the reality – civilians being killed by Russian bombs. And Mark Zuckerberg does not like reality to be shown on his platform, well not that particular reality, at least.
Mark Rutte’s video should come with a warning of ‘Your video may cause extreme nausea and shame, so we have put it lower in your feed, as it defecates on standards of normal, human decency and respect.’
Watching Rutte using – appropriating – the ruins and misery of Kyiv for his own PR purposes is painful. To be honest, it almost made me cry of shame.
It would have been one thing if a NATO Secretary General had come to Kyiv 4 days or 4 weeks into the war and made such a happy-clappy ‘we-are-your-friends-for-ever-so-YOU(not I)-should-stay-in-the-fight’ video. (Many Western politicians did.)
But we are 4 years into the war. Surely the West has by now lost any right to speak about what Ukrainians should and should not do.
As Professor of Strategic Studies, Phillips P. Obrien, put it yesterday: Phillips P. OBrien
Always remember. Not defeating Russia is a choice that Europeans and Americans are making. Nothing more, nothing less.
In those 4 years, where we have stuck to that choice, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have died, been maimed, injured, raped and tortured, many millions have fled their homes.
Yes, the West has helped Ukraine, for sure, but not enough. It is about three years ago that Ukrainians started talking about that ‘the West is helping us enough to keep us in the fight, but not enough for us to win and liberate our country.’
Yesterday, we published a piece from Kyiv under Russian bombardment, people left in -23 degrees without heating or electricity, neighbours talking about ‘the slow death of Ukraine’. I have heard that sentence from hundreds of my Ukrainian friends and colleagues.
For the NATO boss to stand in the middle of Kyiv’s ruins and excitedly speak about how Ukrainians feel, what Ukrainians want, takes the biscuit.
We often use Chamberlain being fooled by Hitler in 1938 as a horror example. But at last Chamberlain thought that he was doing the right thing, however wrong he was.
Mark Rutte knows full well that what he is pretending that he is doing will never happen.
Anybody who has studied Vladimir Putin for about five minutes knows that. Any Ukrainian kid knows that.
“NATO stands with Ukraine,” Rutte says, “Ukraine needs to stay in the fight.”
“NATO allies are working together to make sure that the security guarantees are in place, that the day when a peace deal is done, or there is a long-term ceasefire, Putin knows that if he attacks again, the reaction will be devastating.”
“The day when a peace deal is done…”, the NATO boss says. After four years of war. After four years of the Russian dictator demonstrating that he has zero interest in peace. There will be no peace deal. And everybody knows that.
Meaning that Rutte’s words are entirely empty. Entirely empty. As he is standing there using the ruins of Kyiv as a clever backdrop.
Never mind that there actually still is no agreement among the NATO countries about security guarantees; much talk, many meetings but no plan, just sweet maybe-if-then-perhaps-mutterings. And all of them depend on a US backup that nobody believes in.
a) It is not realistic that Donald Trump would give such a backup guarantee, and
b) even if he did, such a guarantee would be utterly untrustworthy. The man that Rutte calls ‘Daddy’ has openly said that he doubts that the U.S. with him as commander-in-chief would come to the help of, say, the Baltics, in case of a Russian attack.
In fact, in 2026, you will have to look far to find an informed analyst who believes that NATO’s article 5 is still alive. Never mind a U.S. promise to lift a finger for Ukraine.
And you would probably have to look even further to find a Ukrainian who believes anything of what Mark Rutte just said. On video.
In the piece we published yesterday, the writer, a Kyivan himself, wrote:
“People in Kyiv are seeing Trump’s so-called ‘peace plan’ as a smokescreen for Russian aggression, the slow-motion killing of Ukraine. They curse Trump’s impotence, indecision and conspiracy with Putin.”
It was exactly that ‘so-called peace plan’ that Mark Rutte talked so excitedly about, standing there in the ruins of Kyiv.
Which makes you wonder why the NATO boss ‘braved the elements’, left Kyiv’s cozy Intercontinental
Hotel, put on make-up, got the lighting all set up, and made this video? The answer is, of course, that Rutte’s little promo has nothing to do with Ukraine and everything to do with his domestic audience. And smouldering ruins in Kyiv is too cool a backdrop not to take advantage of.
Rutte is a man who is looking for a job. Or a justification for staying in the one he has.
This is a man who almost immediately after Donald Trump’s assault on the Ukrainian President and the Ukrainian people in the Oval Office last February, decided to suck up to the US President and call him ‘Daddy.’ Something that did not make him look great.
Rutte should, of course, have been kicked out there and then.
The leader of NATO was morally and politically dead-wrong.
Morally wrong because, instead of sucking up to the orange blob, he – as NATO’s leader – should unequivocally have called Trump to order for cutting back and soon totally ending U.S. military aid to Ukraine. This unilateral step by Trump was directly against agreed NATO policy.
Politically, Rutte was wrong because no amount of sad sucking up to a bully will make him stop abusing you. Trump’s behaviour since then has proved that – he only backed down when the Danes and the Canadians recently told him to go to hell, supported by some European partners.
Rutte is in Kyiv to find himself a purpose, an audience.
‘Yeah, those ruins look cool.’
The lack of respect for the Ukrainians beggars belief.
Mark Rutte, I have one question for you – no, actually, I should ask the question of the Western taxpayers who pay your salary:
Do you think that one single Ukrainian feels better, feels more assured, feels safer, after having watched your video?
If the answer is no, why was this video made and posted?
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“This is a man who almost immediately after Donald Trump’s assault on the Ukrainian President and the Ukrainian people in the Oval Office last February, decided to suck up to the US President and call him ‘Daddy.’ Something that did not make him look great.
Rutte should, of course, have been kicked out there and then.”
EXACTLY.
Rutte has been exposed as just another bullshit-talking career politician.
Like his predecessors.
Wonder what Rutte told Taco to back off the Greenland stuff