“Are we underestimating the Russian threat?”… Portugal reacts angrily to NATO Secretary-General

(Brussels = Yonhap News) Correspondent Hyun Yun-kyung = Portugal's Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed regret to the head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for making remarks to the effect that his country underestimates the threat from Russia.

According to the European edition of Politico on the 10th (local time), Portugal's Ministry of Foreign Affairs criticized on social media

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said in an interview with a Dutch broadcaster last week that southern European countries such as Portugal and Spain perceive Russian aggression as a distant threat.

“Spain and Portugal say, ‘Russia is far away, and what happens in Russia mainly affects Poland,’” he said in the interview, adding, “But I tell them that it takes Russia’s newest missiles to reach Lisbon only five minutes longer than to Warsaw.”

Portugal's Ministry of Foreign Affairs took issue with this statement and emphasized, "Secretary-General Rutte should not overlook countries and governments that firmly support Ukraine and fully understand the threat posed by Russia."

Regarding this, NATO spokeswoman Allison Hart said, "It is self-evident that all NATO member countries perceive Russia as a threat, but Secretary-General Rutte frequently emphasizes how close the Russian threat is even to the general public, who are relatively less interested in security issues," and explained that General Rutte's remarks were made in this context.

According to the Kiel Institute for World Economic Research, since February 2022, when Russia fully invaded Ukraine, Portugal has provided military and humanitarian assistance worth 390 million euros (about 580 billion won) to Ukraine, equivalent to about 0.18% of gross domestic product (GDP). Spain's support to Ukraine amounts to 1.5 billion euros (about 2.23 trillion won), or 0.2% of GDP.

This scale is significantly smaller than that of Northern European countries such as Denmark and the Baltic countries, where the amount of support compared to GDP is 2-3%.

Meanwhile, as the war in Ukraine approaches five years, there is tension among European Union (EU) member states over the sharing of support funds for Ukraine.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, the EU's largest economy, said that other member states should equally share the support for Ukraine and made this issue a premise for EU long-term budget negotiations. Countries that are negative about support for Ukraine, including the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria, are protesting, calling it a 'threat'.