ROME (Reuters) -Russia could have the ability to pose a military threat to NATO territory within five years, Italy’s Defence Minister Guido Crosetto said on Thursday.
He was addressing lawmakers on the outcome of a NATO summit last week when the military alliance agreed to increase spending on defence and security.
“Allies shared concerns about the growing threat from Russia. There are no signs of conversion of Russian production to civilian purposes, not even in the event of a ceasefire,” he said.
Crosetto also said Russian domestic support for the war in Ukraine, begun in 2022, apparently was intact.
Without saying where the figures came from, he said Russia has lost more than a million soldiers, including 200,000 in the first six months of this year.
“Yet Russia managed to mobilise another 300,000 in six months without any erosion of domestic consensus,” he said.
Referring to the targets set last week by NATO members to increase defence and security spending as a percentage of GDP, Crosetto said Italy had already made some provisions in the budget and would not divert resources from health or pensions, confirming a Reuters report.
(Reporting by Giuseppe Fonte; editing by Barbara Lewis)
