Former U.S. head of state and presidential candidate Donald Trump stoked the ire of U.S. lawmakers and international leaders, after remarking he would not protect NATO countries from Russian attacks if they lag on their membership payments.

Speaking at a rally in South Carolina on Saturday, Trump said that, as president, he warned NATO allies that he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to a member country that didn’t meet its defense spending guidelines.

Trump, who has a long history of criticizing the transatlantic military alliance, recounted a time when an unspecified president of a NATO member challenged him on his threat not to defend them from a potential Russian invasion if they failed to meet NATO’s target of spending at least 2% of their budget on the military.

“You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent … No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills,” Trump said.

The U.S. has historically had the largest number of military personnel out of all NATO countries, counting 1.35 million troops in 2023, according to Statista.

Trump has been accused of entertaining close ties with Russia during his first presidential mandate. The Kremlin declined to address Trump’s remarks.

“I am still [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s press secretary, but not Trump’s,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters, according to Reuters.

Top Western officials, as well as both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, sharply criticized Trump’s comments. U.S. President Joe Biden, who has also declared intentions to run for a second presidential mandate, described Trump’s remarks as “appalling and dangerous.”

“Sadly, they are also predictable coming from a man who is promising to rule as a dictator like the ones he praises on day one if he returns to the oval office,” Biden said Sunday in a statement.

Trump is vying to clinch Republican backing for his presidential bid at the polls later this year, facing off former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley.

In an interview with CBS, Haley said Sunday that “the last thing we ever want to do is side with Russia.”

She added that the NATO alliance “allows us to prevent war.”

Former Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie also criticized Trump’s comments, saying in an interview with NBC News on Sunday that “this is why I’ve been saying for a long time that he’s unfit to be president of the United States.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that NATO stands “ready and able” to defend all allies and any attack would be met with a “united and forceful” response.

“Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the US, and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk,” Stoltenberg said in a statement.

“I expect that regardless of who wins the presidential election the US will remain a strong and committed NATO Ally,” he added.

NATO’s 31 members, which include the U.S., Canada, France, Italy, Turkey and the U.K., agreed in July last year to spend at least 2% of their gross domestic product on defense, firming up a previous goal.

A report released by NATO last year showed only 11 of the then-30 member alliance were spending 2% of GDP or more on defense. The defense spending target is not a requirement and many countries have sought to ramp up their military spending since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

NATO’s so-called Article 5 mutual defense clause means that an attack against one NATO member is considered an attack against all allies.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Monday that NATO cannot be an “a la carte” military alliance dependent on the impulses of the U.S. political leadership.

“NATO cannot be an ‘a la carte’ military alliance … depending on the humor of the president of the U.S.,” Borrell said when asked to respond to Trump’s comments, Reuters reported.

Germany’s Foreign Office on Sunday posted “One for all and all for one” on its English language X social media account, supported by the hashtag “#StrongerTogether.”

Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said Sunday via X that NATO’s motto of “‘one for all, all for one’ is a concrete commitment.”

“Undermining the credibility of allied countries means weakening the entire North Atlantic Treaty Organization. No election campaign is an excuse for playing with the security of the Alliance,” he added.

BRUSSELS — European heads of state are gearing up for a difficult two-day gathering where support for Ukraine is at the top of the agenda, but internal divisions threaten any significant action toward Kyiv.

The meeting comes at a crunch time for Ukraine, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hops across the world seeking further aid in the fight against Russia’s invasion. He started the week in Argentina, then travelled to the United States and landed in Norway on Wednesday.

Throughout all of his stops, he delivered one message: cutting support to Ukraine is a gift to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.

“We must make decisions,” European Council President Charles Michel, who will be chairing the summit, told CNBC Tuesday.

“It is our duty to make sure we protect the interest of the European Union by supporting Ukraine.”

Some 50 billion euros ($54.43 billion) are on the table. The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, proposed in June to send this sum to Ukraine between 2024 and 2027, but opposition from Hungary, whose prime minister met with Vladimir Putin in person in October, is blocking the disbursement.

EU leaders will also discuss whether to start official negotiations with Ukraine for the nation’s potential future accession to the bloc. Hungary has, once again, expressed reservations. A handful of other EU member states, such as Italy, have also raised issues over enlarging the EU.

Speaking to CNBC on Tuesday, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Olga Stefanishyna said that the start of official negotiations would be a “major guarantee of Ukraine sustainability.”

“We need these messages to keep on being mobilised,” she added.

Nearly two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, western support for Kyiv is flattening. There has been a nearly 90% drop in newly committed aid to Ukraine between August and October, compared with the same period of 2022, data from the Kiel Institute showed last week.

“Ukraine now increasingly relies on a core group of donors such as the U.S., Germany, and the Nordic and Eastern European countries that continue to pledge and deliver both financial aid and important weaponry,” the institute said.

The recent war between Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel has also drifted attention away from Kyiv, while inflationary pressures have limited the ability of western governments to provide more aid. At the same time, Russia retains an advantage when it comes to military strength.

“Russia will likely continue to have a considerable advantage in terms of the availability of military equipment, munitions, and manpower, at least in the first half of 2024,” Andrius Tursa, Central and Eastern Europe Advisor at consultancy firm Teneo, said.

“Having mobilized its economy for the war, Russia is rapidly increasing its military output, in addition to supplies from North Korea and Iran. Moscow is also keeping up military recruitment to compensate for vast manpower losses without triggering visible public discontent.”

Recent surveys suggest that the majority of the Russian population is still in favor of Putin’s actions in Ukraine, although support is gradually declining. According to a poll carried out by the Levada Center and issued earlier this month, 74% of those surveyed support fully or to some extent the war in Ukraine.

Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES — The head of the International Monetary Fund on Sunday underlined the case for carbon pricing at the COP28 climate summit, saying that the oil and gas industry recognizes “the writing on the wall.”

A long-time proponent of carbon pricing, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said this approach creates an incentive for polluters to rapidly decarbonize.

Carbon pricing ascertains the cost that a company needs to pay for its planet-warming emissions and is widely regarded as the most cost-effective and flexible way to cut such pollution.

The IMF recently raised its average price forecast to $85 a ton by the end of the decade, up from a previous forecast of $75. Underlining the scale of the challenge, Georgieva said the current average price is around $20 per ton.

“For those that have adopted a carbon price, how do we get big emitters to accept that we need to accelerate decarbonization?” Georgieva told CNBC’s Dan Murphy at the COP28 conference.

“Well, two things. One, without a carbon price, it won’t happen fast enough. So, we have to move to that incentive,” she said.

“Two, Mother Nature is helping us because countries rich and poor are already experiencing the devastating force of climate change.”

Her comments come as policymakers and business leaders convene in Dubai for the U.N.’s two-week long climate summit, which is scheduled to end on Dec. 12.

The conference is a pivotal opportunity to accelerate climate action, at a time when the world is on track to record its hottest year on record and as extreme weather events take their toll across the globe.

For the IMF chief, COP28 marks an important opportunity for countries to reassess policies that incentivize the use of fossil fuels. She stressed that government subsidies for coal, oil and gas hit $1.3 trillion last year.

“Now we have to pull this gradually and substitute with the other part of the incentive, which is pricing. I want to tell everybody who is willing to listen that a carbon price has [been] proven to work,” Georgieva said, adding that existing schemes — such as the EU’s Emissions Trading System — have registered a rapid reduction of emissions.

“Two, it generates revenues. The same European Union got 175 billion euros ($191 billion) collected from [a] carbon price,” she said.

“Three, it can be fair. It is fair first, because the more you pollute, the more you pay, and the less you pollute, the less you pay. But also, many countries [can] take some of this money and give it back, especially to the vulnerable people.”

Asked about the role of the oil and gas industry at COP28 and how to get Big Oil on side with carbon pricing, Georgieva said, “One of the good news that comes from research is that we are going to see the peak of oil and gas in this decade. Consumption is then going to gradually going down.”

“One of the great news from COP is a commitment to triple renewables in energy within the next years. Where the power of COP has come is by mobilizing the voices of people and that is already happening. I cannot think of any industry that is willing to be the enemy of the people,” she continued.

“I think that oil and gas is seeing the writing on the wall. We see many of the oil-producing countries diversifying quite rapidly and we also see an investment coming from money generated from oil into renewables [at] scale.”

A project to build a facility described as “the world’s largest offshore wind farm” took a big step forward this month by producing its first power.

Located in the North Sea, over 130 kilometers off England’s northeast coast, the Dogger Bank Wind Farm still has some way to go before it’s fully operational, but the installation and powering up of its first turbine is a major feat in itself.

That’s because GE Vernova’s Haliade-X turbines stand 260 meters tall — that’s higher than San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge — and have blades measuring 107 meters.

Turbine installation at Dogger Bank has required a huge amount of planning and preparation, with the Voltaire — a specialist vessel designed and built by the family-owned Jan De Nul Group — playing a key role.

With a lifting capacity of 3,200 metric tons, the Voltaire — named after the 18th-century French philosopher — will have installed a total of 277 Haliade-X turbines when its work is complete.

Described by Dogger Bank as the “largest offshore jack-up installation vessel ever built,” in many ways, it’s the pinnacle of an extensive supply chain involving numerous businesses and stakeholders.

The logistics are complex and multi-layered, with water depth a particular issue.

The sea in the Dogger Bank Offshore Development Zone is up to 63 meters deep, meaning the Voltaire’s ability to work in deeper waters is crucial. 

This is where its four legs come into play.

According to Jan De Nul, the legs of the Voltaire — which was built at the COSCO Shipping Shipyard in China — enable it to lift itself above the water’s surface.

With each leg measuring roughly 130 meters in length, they highlight the scale of equipment required to install huge offshore wind turbines like GE’s Haliade-X.

In an online Q&A before installations at Dogger Bank began, Jan De Nul’s Rutger Standaert spoke of their importance. “Thanks to those legs, the Voltaire can effectively operate at a water depth of 80 meters,” Standaert, who is manager of vessel construction at the business, said.

He noted that the Voltaire’s capabilities would enable installations further out to sea, allowing it to play a key role in the emerging floating offshore wind sector.

“Off the Scottish coast, for example, expensive floating windfarms are often the only way to tap into offshore wind,” he said. “The water is too deep for fixed windfarms, but the Voltaire can offer new opportunities.”

Thinking big

Once completed, the Dogger Bank Wind Farm will have a total capacity of 3.6 gigawatts (GW) and be able to power as many as six million homes per year, according to its developers.

Work on the project is taking place over three phases: Dogger Bank A, B, and C. A fourth phase of the wind farm known as Dogger Bank D has also been proposed, and would increase its capacity even further.

Søren Lassen is head of offshore wind research at Wood Mackenzie, a research and consultancy group. He described Dogger Bank as “a huge project, especially if you combine the three phases.”

“It is a project that requires a lot of preparation,” he told CNBC. “There’s the logistics in terms of having the vessels to do the installation … and then of course, you also have the logistics in terms of getting the components to the marshaling port.”

Both of these aspects were being made “a lot more complicated” by the use of next-generation turbines and a next-generation installation vessel, Lassen said.

“You have … a lot of innovation that goes into this. And not only do you need a new vessel or new components, you also need new factories to build those components.”

As such, a slew of upgrades and adjustments were needed to “reverberate throughout the entire value chain” for operations to run smoothly, he added.

Bigger turbines, bigger challenges?

Thanks to their sheer size, larger turbine designs have created a specific set of needs for the offshore wind sector and sites like the Dogger Bank Wind Farm.

“From cranes to vessels, we use a number of specially designed pieces of equipment to transport the Haliade-X turbines that will be used in this project,” a spokesperson for GE Offshore Wind said in a statement sent to CNBC.

Wood Mackenzie’s Lassen stressed the importance of having dedicated transportation vessels, noting that the towers of turbines need to be broken into three or four sections in order to fit on board.  

Massive blades represent the biggest challenge, he said, as they have to be laid flat. “And that just means that you need a very, very long transportation vessel, [and] that you need to stack them up accordingly.”

Meanwhile, delays or bottlenecks can have far-reaching — and expensive — consequences.

Lassen cited the example of blades not being delivered on time, which leads to vessels having to “go away and then come back half a year later to do the installation. This is very costly, of course.”

And delays also lead to lost revenue.

“These projects are going out [and] generating a lot of power from the day that they’re being installed, pretty much,” Lassen added.

“So any delays [and] you’re also losing a lot of revenue, especially right now when the power prices are really, really high.”

The bigger picture

Offshore wind farms are set to play a significant role in reducing emissions and hitting net zero goals in the years ahead — but a supply chain that’s well-run and reliable will be key to the industry’s success.

This is set to cost serious money. According to Wood Mackenzie, a base case of 30 GW of installations per year by 2030 — excluding China — will require investment of around $27 billion by 2026 to build out supply chains.

“The supply chain needs to invest,” Lassen said, adding that it also needed capital, certainty and concrete, firm orders. However, cost pressures mean there is currently uncertainty over projects planned for 2025, 2026 and 2027.

“Any delays to these projects takes away volume from the supply chain, and the supply chain needs that volume to convert it into revenue to build new factories,” Lassen explained.

It is crucial that projects planned for the next few years go ahead, he added. “That helps the underlying supply chain ramp up so they can build the capacity [for] ’27, ’28, ’29 and well into the 2030s as well.”

French citizens are heading to the polls Sunday in a presidential election set against the backdrop of war in Ukraine and a cost of living crisis.

The second — and final — round of voting sees centrist incumbent Emmanuel Macron face off against nationalist and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. The same pair were also in the final runoff back at the 2017 election, but political commentators believe Le Pen has improved her chances this time around.

“While Macron is likely to get re-elected on Sunday, around 13-15% of voters remain undecided. Therefore, there is still room for surprises,” Antonio Barroso, deputy director of research at consulting firm Teneo, said in a research note Thursday.

Barroso said that one potential path to a Le Pen victory would be if a considerable amount of voters who had opted for hard-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon in the first round, suddenly switched to the radical right instead of staying at home or casting a blank vote.

A poll out Thursday predicted that Macron would win the second round with 55% of the votes, with Le Pen on 45%. This is, however, a smaller margin when compared to the final result of France’s 2017 election. Back then, Macron crushed Le Pen’s party (National Front which has since been rebranded National Rally) with 66.1% of the votes, to 33.9%.

“Opinion polls now give Macron a 55% to 45% edge over Le Pen. In the past five years, polls have not understated support for Le Pen. But, with up to 25% of voters still undecided early this week, we cannot rule out an upset win for Le Pen,” analysts at Berenberg said in a research note Friday, adding that “a lot is at stake for France and the EU.”

Le Pen has softened her rhetoric toward the European Union since 2017. She is no longer campaigning for France to leave the EU and the euro, saying she wants to transform the bloc into an alliance of nations — fundamentally changing the way it works. She also wants French troops to move out of NATO’s military command.

“Le Pen’s narrow ‘France first’ approach and her desire to put her own French rules above EU rules would cause constant strife with the EU, hurt the business climate and scare away foreign investors. France would fall back,” Berenberg analysts said.

They added: “She wants to preserve outdated economic structures through subsidies and regulations. She is toying with the idea of lowering the retirement age from 62 to 60 after 40 or 42 years of work, whereas Macron wants to raise the retirement age to 65.”

The last days of the campaign trail have seen Le Pen’s old links with Russia and President Vladimir Putin resurface. In a key TV debate Wednesday against Macron, Le Pen was accused of being “dependent” on Russia.

Macron told Le Pen during the two-hour talks: “When you speak to Russia, you are speaking to your banker,” according to a translation. Back in 2014, Le Pen’s party reportedly requested loans from Russian banks including from the First Czech Russian Bank — a lender that is said to have links to the Kremlin. Le Pen rebuffed the accusations Wednesday, saying: “I am a completely free women.”

Warwick University Professor of French Politics Jim Shields told CNBC Wednesday that Macron has had the difficult task of defending his five years in office but also presenting a fresh vision for the future.

“Le Pen, this time round, can play the card of change much more than Macron,” he said. “What he has to do is show empathy, come off his high horse, try to show that he cares about people’s everyday concerns, that he’s not the president of the rich that many accuse him of being,” he added, referencing surging inflation in France which has become a pillar of Le Pen’s election campaign.

“Each of the two candidates need to try to correct their perceived weakness. For Le Pen, lack of credibility, for Macron, lack of connectedness, lack of empathy, in order to attract new voters,” Shields said.

If Macron is re-elected he will become the first incumbent in two decades to return for a second term. The yield on the 10-year French government bond has risen in the runup to the election, crossing the 1% threshold at the start of April amid wider concerns on inflation and the war in Ukraine.

Polls are due to close at 8 p.m. local time (2 p.m. ET) with early projections on a winner expected shortly afterward.