Lt. Gen. Kellogg: Finland, Sweden in NATO is Putin’s ‘Worst-Case Scenario’

EXCERPT:

KELLOGG: “Well, I think his worst-case scenario — by the way, thanks for having me today — I think it’s a general’s worst-case scenario as well. When you add Finland and you add Sweden, when you add their defense budgets, right now you are looking at the defense budgets that are 25 — NATO now — 25 times larger than Russia has, and you look at two really high-quality military nations in Finland and Sweden, and look, what Putin doesn’t seem to realize, because what his egregious actions within Ukraine, but now everybody is marching towards that two percent of GDP, which they all agreed to in 2014 in the Wales declaration. When President Trump came in, there was only five nations at two percent GDP, with 20 percent that was modernization. Now everybody is marching towards that, including Germany. And Germany was the biggest laggard. So now when you add that number out there, you’re looking at probably 28 to 30 percent defense expenditures that exceed Russia. And the other thing, people don’t look at, it’s geography. Right now, Ukraine — I’m sorry, not Ukraine, but NATO borders Russia about 400 miles. When you add Finland, it adds another 1,100 miles.”