Boris Ruge, Acting Deputy Secretary General
2023
Ambassador Boris Ruge was appointed Acting Deputy Secretary General in September 2024. He joined NATO's International Staff in 2023 as Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs and Security Policy.
He previously served as Vice Chairman of the Munich Security Conference, German Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Director Middle East/North Africa at the German Foreign Office in Berlin, and Deputy Chief of Mission of the German Embassy in Washington, DC.
Having joined the Foreign Service in 1989, much of Ambassador Ruge´s career has been focused on security policy and stabilization. He worked at NATO Headquarters in Brussels during the Kosovo air campaign. He later served as chief political adviser to two successive Commanders of NATO’s Kosovo Force as well as Head of the Political Department at the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina. At the Foreign Office in Berlin, he was deputy head of division for European Security and Defence Policy.
Following undergraduate studies at the University of Cologne, Ambassador Ruge received a master’s degree in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He holds a diploma in international relations from the Bologna Center of the Johns Hopkins University and was a participant in the 2005 course of the Royal College of Defence Studies in London. He is married and has three daughters and one son.