Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops in the Donbas. The war has triggered the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the depths of the Cold War. Rutte, in a speech in Berlin on Thursday, said that NATO should be "prepared for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured" and asserted that "we are Russia's next target."