Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone says the Russian leader cannot be trusted in peace talks and calls for European allies to double their production of weapons
Larisa Brown
February 14, 2025
The Times
Ukraine “will not be Vladimir Putin’s last target”, Nato’s most senior military officer has warned, as he called for European allies to double their production of weapons to prepare for war. Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, the new chair of the alliance’s military committee, said history showed the Russian leader could not be trusted and Nato would “watch him” as Ukraine peace talks developed. Although countries need to do more, Nato is ready for conflict and would outmatch Russia’s conventional defence capabilities and its nuclear weapons stockpile should tensions escalate, he said.
In an interview with The Times, he said defence firms needed to stop thinking about profits and instead switch to a wartime mentality in which they focus on saving lives on the battlefield — and quickly. As chair of the committee, he advises Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary-general, on military matters, such as troop numbers and force structures.
Cavo Dragone, an Italian naval officer who previously served as chief of the defence staff in Italy, took over the Nato role from Admiral Rob Bauer last month.
With President Trump in the White House and uncertainty over the future of Ukraine, Cavo Dragone has already spent nights sleeping at his desk. “He is a character,” Cavo Dragone said of Trump at the Munich Security Conference at Hotel Bayerischer Hof, where world leaders descended to thrash out military plans.
He brushed off mounting divisions between the US and its European allies in the alliance, saying “the world order was already crumbling before” any recent developments. “We have been expecting his kind of posture since even before the election,” said Cavo Dragone, referring to Trump’s decision to hold a 90-minute phone call with Putin this week, as his Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, made huge concessions with regards to Ukraine’s future before talks had even begun.
Cavo Dragone said the reaction from Europe — which included defence ministers accusing the US president of “appeasement” and walking allies into a “deadly trap” — had been “mature”. However, he said that a “real victory for Putin is not acceptable”. He said Ukraine “must be part of the conversation because it is its destiny”, as should the European Union. “Ukraine will not be his last target,” he warned of Putin as he referred to Russia’s war in Georgia in 2008, his annexation of Crimea in 2014 and his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Many European leaders, especially those in the Baltic states, believe a peace deal carved out by the US may only pause the conflict in Ukraine and allow Moscow to rebuild its military, before Putin tries again to take Ukraine and push further into eastern Europe.
Cavo Dragone said allies would see if Putin had “changed his attitude” and could now be trusted, however Nato would “watch him and keep an eye on him”.
He also suggested there could be a “coalition of the willing”, or a peacekeeping force under a UN banner deployed to the country to provide Ukraine security, after the Americans ruled out sending Nato forces.
Despite growing threats from Russia and China, Cavo Dragone said he remained confident the alliance would not have to invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty, which states that an armed attack on one Nato member is considered an attack on all members.
This is because if Putin tried to attack one member state, he would “lose more than he is going to gain and he knows this”. Cavo Dragone said Nato was like having “health insurance”. Asked if the alliance was stronger than Russia, he said: “Yes, from the conventional point of view, and yes, from the nuclear point of view, I think so, because the American, UK and French umbrella is stronger.” He added: “The way [Russia] have performed is weak, they are not the Red Army that we thought.”
However, he said more needed to be done to strengthen the alliance and urged the defence industry to speed up production, double their output and lower prices. “They need to work faster,” he said, describing the events in Europe as a “wake-up call to industry because they are lagging behind”.
He continued: “They are still in an old mentality in which earning money was the big issue, now they must understand they need to be part of defence; we have soldiers risking their lives in the trenches and we need them to speed up their war production.” He said it was a “fantasy” that there could be a conflict within the alliance after Trump issued threats against Canada and Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark.
Larisa Brown is defence editor at The Times. Before joining The Times, her previous roles included Middle East correspondent, based in Lebanon, and defence and security editor, based in Westminster. Larisa has reported from multiple conflict zones, including Syria and Libya, and is a British Journalism Awards Campaign of the Year winner for her work highlighting the plight of Afghan interpreters.