Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on July 3, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 23, 2026
Add as preferred source on GoogleItaly's Defense Minister warns of Russia's potential military threat to NATO within five years, urging increased defense spending.
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)
Italy's Defence Minister Guido Crosetto stated that Russia could pose a military threat to NATO territory within five years.
At the NATO summit, allies agreed to increase spending on defence and security due to concerns about the growing threat from Russia.
Crosetto mentioned that Russia has lost more than a million soldiers, including 200,000 in the first six months of this year.
He indicated that Russian domestic support for the war in Ukraine appears to be intact, with no signs of erosion in consensus.
Crosetto noted that Italy has already made some provisions in its budget to meet the targets set by NATO for increasing defence spending.
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