NATO chief warns that Putin wants long-term confrontation with Europe after Ukraine

Associated Press

BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to “wipe Ukraine off the map” and could come after other parts of Europe next. Rutte told the Carnegie Europe think-tank in Brussels it is “time to shift to a wartime mindset” and that people should gird themselves for the prospect that Russia might try to use “swarms of drones” in Europe as it has to deadly effect in Ukraine. The former Dutch prime minister was making his inaugural speech just over two months after he took office as NATO’s top civilian official. He listed Russia’s attacks on Georgia in 2008, the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, and the all-out invasion launched almost three years ago.