Secretary, great to sit down with you. Thank you so much. I want to ask you, first of all, about this piece of news that we saw that Russian President Vladimir Putin is going to travel to North Korea for a two-day visit, and a Kremlin aid has been quoted as saying that the visit would include a partnership agreement which would need to include security issues. What do you make of this?

It demonstrates how Russia now is aligning more and more with authoritarian leaders, Iran, Beijing, but also with North Korea. And North Korea has delivered more than 1 million shells for artillery to Russia. North Korea is helping Russia to conduct a war of aggression against Ukraine. And in return, Russia is delivering technology for their missile and nuclear programs.

Will there be a specific NATO response to whatever this agreement looks like?

Well, our response has been clear all the way that this just shows how dependent Russia now is on other authoritarian powers, but also how Russia is violating UN Security Council agreements on not supporting North Korea's missile and nuclear programs. So it shows that security is not regional. What happens in Ukraine, in Europe, matters for Asia, and what happens in Asia matters for Europe.

On that, you spoke to the Telegraph over the weekend about NATO's nuclear posture. I know that it hasn't broadly changed, but you did say it's important to, quote, communicate the direct message that we, of course, are a nuclear alliance. Is there a specific threat here that you were referring to that you believe NATO needs to counter?

Now, this is a general message that NATO remains a nuclear alliance. That's our ultimate deterrence. The purpose of NATO is not to fight the war. The purpose of NATO is to prevent the war, to ensure that any potential adversary knows that an attack on NATO will trigger a response from the whole Alliance, and therefore we need also the ultimate security guarantees the nuclear weapons provide.

Regardless of Kremlin, the spokesperson, Dmitri Peskov, said your words were, quote, nothing else but an escalation.

What's your response? Well, this is nothing new. Nato has had a nuclear deterrent since we were founded, and We are transparent about this, so there are no changes.

So it's not an escalation?

Not at all. It's Russia that is escalating by partly having a lot of dangerous nuclear rhetoric, but also by actually threatening to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Nuclear weapons shall never be used, and a nuclear war should never be fought, and can never be won, and that has to be fully understood in Moscow.

I want to I want to ask you about something you mentioned in your comments today. You said, Allies need to impose a cost on China unless its support for Russia stops. What do you think that cost should look like?

Well, that's a bit too early to say, but the reality is that China is trying to both ways. China is propping up the Russian war economy. They are sharing a lot of technologies, microelectronics, which are key for Russia to build missiles, weapons they use against Ukraine. But at the same time, China tries to maintain normal economic relationships with European NATO allies.

So you think there should be sanctions, perhaps?

At some stage, we should consider some economic cost if China doesn't change their behavior country, because now China is the main supporter of Russia's war effort, war aggression against Ukraine, the biggest war in Europe since the Second World War. At the same time, they're trying to have a normal relationship with European allies, and this cannot work in the long run.

A quick follow-up on that. Have you spoke to NATO member states about possible sanctions, what that cost could look like?

Well, this is an ongoing conversation among NATO allies on how to deal with the security consequences of the fact that China is propping up Russia's war effort in Ukraine. It's not for NATO to make decisions on sanctions, as that's for individual allies, the European Union US, but of course, the discussion about what are the consequences for China if they continue to provide support. That's something that goes on among NATO allies.

Another point of news from NATO. On Friday, NATO agreed to play a bigger role in coordinating weapons deliveries, and you said it would put, Our support for Ukraine on a firmer footing for years to Is this a direct response to concerns about a change in the White House after November?

Well, what we have seen is that NATO allies have provided unprecedented support to Ukraine. But at the same time this winter, we saw serious delays and gaps in our support and we need to do whatever we can to ensure that we prevent those gaps in the future. Because we know that the stronger our support to Ukraine, the sooner the war can end. Because the quicker President Putin will understand that he cannot wait us out. Therefore, I hope that allies can agree a more long-term pledge, a support to Ukraine, and also to give NATO a stronger role in providing that support.

But Donald Trump, the former President, doesn't agree. He said over the weekend that the scale of US support for Ukraine is too much. He called President Zelenskyy the greatest salesman of all time. He said, He just left four days ago with $60 billion, and he gets home, and he announces that he needs another $60 billion. It never ends. Do you have a response to that?

Well, I strongly believe that it will not be in the security interest of the United States if President Putin wins in Ukraine, because that will send a message to him, but also to President Xi, that when they file it in international law, when they invade another country, they get what they want. This is not only about Ukraine, it's also about sending a message to President Xi that he should not use military force against Taiwan or in any way in in the Asia Pacific. Therefore, it is in the US security interest to ensure that Ukraine prevails. We have to remember that European allies are really matching what the US is doing. It's not the US doing this alone. European allies are providing as much military support to Ukraine as the United States.

You also said in your remarks today that NATO will continue to bring Ukraine closer to membership, so when the time is right, it can join without delay. Is there any indication of when that time would be? Because Ukraine is interested, obviously, in joining the alliance as soon as possible.

I'm not able to say when that decision will be taken because to be invited to NATO, we need not the majority of NATO allies to agree, but we need all allies. We need consensus. But in the meantime, we are building a bridge. We are moving Ukraine closer to a membership, not least by providing them military support to ensure that they have the NATO standards, the NATO doctrines, and are more and more what we call interoperable with NATO. So when the time is right, we can make Ukraine a member of the Alliance straight away.

Looking ahead to the summit that will be held here in Washington in July, what are you hoping will be reached at this summit?

That we are sending a very clear message to Moscow that we are supporting Ukraine for long haul, and also that we agree a long-term pledge, support, but also a stronger NATO role in providing this support, because that will help to convince Moscow that they have sit down and agree a just, peaceful solution to this war that ensures that Ukraine can continue as a sovereign independent nation in Europe.

Moscow has given no indication it's willing to sit down or even interested in that.

No. And that's the problem because Moscow believes that if they just wait a year or two, then they will wait those out, and then they will get what they want. We need to convey to them that they cannot wait those out. We had to convey a very long-term commitment. And by conveying a long-term commitment to Ukraine, war soon. The paradox is the longer we can commit, the stronger our support to Ukraine, the sooner we can have an end to the war.

Mr. Secretary, thank you so much for the conversation.

Thanks so much for having me.