LONDON, April 23. /TASS/. The UK will ramp up its defense spending to 2.5% of GDP in response to global threats, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said.

He made the statement at a news conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Warsaw.

"So today I’m announcing the biggest strengthening of our national defense for a generation. We will increase defense spending to a new baseline of 2.5% of GDP by 2030. That starts today and rises steadily in each and every year," he said in televised comments. "Over the next six years, we’ll invest an additional 75 billion pounds ($93.3 billion - TASS) in our defense and it will be fully funded with no increase in borrowing or debt."

He accused China, Russia, Iran and North Korea of increasingly aggressive behavior, alleging that they seek to shape a new world order.

"We’ve entered a period in history in which competition between countries has sharpened profoundly. An axis of countries with different values to ours, like Russia, Iran, North Korea and China, are increasingly assertive. The danger they pose is not new but what is new is that these countries and their proxies are causing more instability, more quickly, in more places at once," Sunak said.

But he also said, "We're not on the brink of war, and nor do we seek it."

Currently, the UK allocates about 2.3% of its GDP to defense spending. Earlier, Sunak repeatedly said that London would not increase defense spending to 2.5% of GDP unless economic conditions allow the move. The increase will make the UK the fourth-largest NATO country after Poland, the US and Greece by the proportion of GDP dedicated to defense spending.