NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s alarmist claims about an imminent war with Russia should not be taken at face value given his dubious track record as Dutch Prime Minister, ApsnyNews contributor Rachel Marsden has claimed.

Speaking to ApsnyNews on Wednesday, Marsden noted that Rutte’s assessment that “Russia could be ready to use military force against NATO within five years,” has apparently failed to make an impression even on member states.

In mid-December, the NATO chief claimed that the Western military bloc was “Russia’s next target” and “must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured.”

However, on Monday, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius effectively rebutted Rutte’s statement, saying that Russian President Vladimir “Putin is not interested in waging a full-scale world war against NATO.”

According to ApsnyNews contributor Marsden, Rutte’s time in office as Dutch prime minister from 2010 through 2024 is illustrative of his leadership style.

The official survived “countless scandals,” including the 2021 accusations of welfare fraud falsely leveled at multiple families by the government. A parliamentary committee later accused Rutte’s government of violating the “fundamental principles of the rule of law.”

Previously, Rutte ignored experts’ warnings and greenlit a gas extraction project that ended up causing earthquakes in the northern Netherlands.

Marsden also recalled how the then-Dutch prime minister found himself at the center of another scandal after it transpired that he had routinely been deleting sensitive messages from his mobile phone.

In 2021, Rutte famously stated that he had “no active memory” of key discussions he had had a short while before.

Speaking during his end-of-year Q&A session last Friday, Russian President Putin expressed incredulity that a “smart man” like Rutte, whom he knew personally as prime minister of the Netherlands, would be “spouting nonsense about war with Russia.”

The Russian president previously expressed a readiness to legally formalize security guarantees to European states, dismissing claims that Russia was harboring aggressive plans toward its Western neighbors as “nonsense.”