A meeting of defense ministers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, has started in Belgium, with an increase in defense spending and support for Ukraine expected to be high on the agenda.

The NATO meeting opened on Thursday at its headquarters in Brussels. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is attending the meeting for the first time.

Prior to the meeting, Hegseth commented about how much NATO members should increase their defense spending in terms of their GDP percentage.

Hegseth said: "The president has said 2 percent is not enough. And we're going to argue that up to 5 percent is the necessary investment from NATO countries to ensure we're able to meet the threats of the future."
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said, "We have to ramp up defense spending because we know we cannot protect ourselves four or five years from now if we don't."
He added, "The US rightly requires us to do more here on the European side and the Canadian side of NATO."

US President Donald Trump has complained that European member nations have been relying too much on the US for their own security, while he is stepping up diplomatic efforts to bring an end to the fighting in Ukraine.

Trump said on Wednesday that he had a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with Zelenskyy in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Wednesday.