Wartime NATO summits have focused on Ukraine. With Trump, this one will be different
BRUSSELS — At its first summits after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, NATO gave President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pride of place at its table. It won't be the same this time.
Europe's biggest land conflict since World War II is now in its fourth year and still poses an existential threat to the continent. Ukraine continues to fight a war so that Europeans don't have to. Just last week, Russia launched one of the biggest drone attacks of the invasion on Kyiv.
But things have changed. The Trump administration insists that it must preserve maneuvering space to entice Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table, so Ukraine must not be allowed steal the limelight.
In Washington last year , the military alliance's weighty summit communique included a vow to supply long-term security assistance to Ukraine, and a commitment to back the country 'on its irreversible path' to NATO membership. The year before, a statement more than twice as long was published in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. A new NATO-Ukraine Council was set up, and Kyiv's membership path fast-tracked. Zelenskyy received a hero's welcome at a concert downtown.
It will be very different at a two-day summit in the Netherlands that starts Tuesday. NATO's most powerful member, the United States, is vetoing Ukraine's membership. It's unclear how long for.
Zelenskyy is invited again, but will not be seated at NATO's table. The summit statement is likely to run to around five paragraphs, on a single page, NATO diplomats and experts say. Ukraine will only get a passing mention.
Recent developments do not augur well for Ukraine.
Earlier this month, frustrated by the lack of a ceasefire agreement, U.S. President Donald Trump said it might be best to let Ukraine and Russia 'fight for a while' before pulling them apart and pursuing peace.
Last weekend, he and Putin spoke by phone, mostly about Israel and Iran , but a little about Ukraine, too, Trump said. America has warned its allies that it has other security priorities , including in the Indo-Pacific and on its own borders.
Then at the Group of Seven summit in Canada, Trump called for Russia to be allowed back into the group; a move that would rehabilitate Putin on the global stage.
The next day, Russia launched its mass drone attack on Kyiv. Putin 'is doing this simply because he can afford to continue the war. He wants the war to go on. It is troubling when the powerful of this world turn a blind eye to it,' Zelenskyy said.
Trump left the G7 gathering early to focus on the conflict between Israel and Iran . Zelenskyy had traveled to Canada to meet with him. No meeting happened, and no statement on Russia or the war was agreed.
Lacking unanimity, other leaders met with Zelenskyy to reassure him of their support.
Trump wants to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. He said he could do it within 100 days , but that target has come and gone. Things are not going well, as a very public bust up with Zelenskyy at the White House demonstrated.
Trump froze military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine's armed forces for a week. The U.S. has stepped back from the Ukraine Defense Contact Group that was set up under the Biden administration and helped to drum up weapons and ammunition.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth skipped its last meeting ; the first time a Pentagon chief has been absent since Russian forces invaded in February 2022.
Addressing Congress on June 10, Hegseth also acknowledged that funding for Ukraine military assistance, which has been robust for the past two years, will be reduced in the upcoming defense budget.
It means Kyiv will receive fewer of the weapons systems that have been key to countering Russia's attack. Indeed, no new aid packages have been approved for Ukraine since Trump took office again in January.
'The message from the administration is clear: Far from guaranteed, future U.S. support for Ukraine may be in jeopardy,' said Riley McCabe, Associate Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S.-based policy research organization.
Cutting aid, McCabe warned, could make the Kremlin believe 'that U.S. resolve is fleeting, and that time is on Russia's side.'
'Putin has less incentive to negotiate if he believes that U.S. disengagement is inevitable and that Russia will soon gain an advantage on the battlefield,' he said.
Trump wants the summit to focus on defense spending. The 32 allies are expected to agree on an investment pledge that should meet his demands.
Still, the Europeans and Canada are determined to keep a spotlight on the war, wary that Russia could set its sights on one of them next. They back Trump's ceasefire efforts with Putin but also worry that the two men are cozying up.
Also, some governments may struggle to convince their citizens of the need to boost defense spending at the expense of other budget demands without a strong show of support for Ukraine — and acknowledgement that Russia remains NATO's biggest security threat.
The summit is highly symbolic for Ukraine in other ways. Zelenskyy wants to prevent his country from being sidelined from international diplomacy, but both he and his allies rely on Trump for U.S. military backup against Russia.
Concretely, Trump and his counterparts will dine with the Dutch King on Tuesday evening. Zelenskyy could take part. Elsewhere, foreign ministers will hold a NATO-Ukraine Council, the forum where Kyiv sits among the 32 allies as an equal to discuss its security concerns and needs.
What is clear is that the summit will be short. One working session on Wednesday. It was set up that way to prevent the meeting from derailing. If the G7 is anything to go by, Trump's focus on his new security priorities — right now, the conflict between Israel and Iran — might make it even shorter.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
American Military News
an hour ago
- American Military News
Zelenskyy says Russia 'chooses to kill' as Putin repeats hard-line demands
This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that a massive Russian drone and missile attack on Kyiv, which claimed dozens of civilian lives, is a reminder that Russia is disregarding cease-fire efforts and 'chooses to kill.' 'This strike is a reminder to the world that Russia spurns a cease-fire and chooses to kill,' Zelenskyy said on June 19 while visiting the site of a nine-story building that collapsed as a result of what Ukraine said was a direct missile hit during the intense aerial assault two nights earlier. 'This vile attack, carried out in the middle of the night, claimed the lives of 23 civilians,' he said on X. Five people were killed in other parts of the capital and more than 150 people in Kyiv and elsewhere were wounded in the massive attack early on June 17, emergency services said. At least two people were killed in the Black Sea port city of Odesa. 'I am grateful to all our partners who understand that Ukraine must grow stronger every single day. I thank everyone who is ready to exert pressure on Moscow in a way that makes them feel the true cost of this war,' Zelenskyy added. Zelenskyy's statement came after Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed he is ready 'to find a solution' to his war on Ukraine and to potentially meet with the Ukrainian president. However, in his remarks at a meeting with representatives of international news agencies on the sidelines of an economic forum in St. Petersburg on June 18, Putin again repeated some of his maximalist positions in comments to foreign media, giving no sign that he is prepared to make substantial concessions. 'We need to find a solution that would not only put an end to the current conflict but also create conditions that would prevent similar situations from recurring in the long term,' Putin said. The remark echoed his repeated statements that any peace deal must address what he calls the 'root causes' of the war — wording he uses to question Ukraine's right to exist, to choose its security partners, and to maintain a strong military. Russian and Ukrainian officials met in Istanbul on May 16 and June 2, the first direct peace talks since the initial weeks of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which Putin launched on February 24, 2022. The negotiations yielded agreements on prisoner swaps and the exchange of bodies of soldiers killed in the war, but produced no progress toward a cease-fire, let alone a peace deal. Russia and Ukraine sent an unspecified number of sick or wounded prisoners home on June 19, the latest in a series of exchanges. Zelenskyy said the exchange brought back Ukrainian soldiers who had fought all along the front lines, including in the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions that were liberated by Ukrainian forces months into the Russian invasion in 2022. 'Most of them had been held captive since 2022… Our goal is to free every single one of them,' Zelenskyy added. Putin said talks could resume at some point after June 22, a date he has previously suggested for a major new swap of prisoners and the bodies of the dead. The Russian leader added, however, that he would only meet Zelenskyy in the 'final phase' of any peace negotiations. Zelenskyy has sought to meet with Putin amid the talks, but the Kremlin says an agreement on a deal must be reached first and Putin repeated his groundless claim that Zelenskyy is not a legitimate leader. 'I am ready to meet with everyone, including Zelenskyy. That is not the issue — if the Ukrainian state trusts someone in particular to conduct negotiations, for God's sake, it can be Zelenskyy,' Putin said. 'I am even ready to meet him — but only if it is some kind of final phase.' The West has slapped sanctions on Russia while NATO has beefed up its forces on its eastern flank since Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Rights groups have alleged major rights violations and war crimes committed by Russian forces during their military operations. Western allies have also widely criticized Putin for his refusal to agree to cease-fire terms put forward by US President Donald Trump. On June 19, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha noted that 100 days have passed since Kyiv accepted Trump's proposal for an unconditional, extendable 30-day cease-fire. Russia has kept up and in some cases intensified its bombardments of Ukrainian cities in recent weeks and is pushing to make further gains at several parts of the long front line, which runs from northeastern Ukraine to the Black Sea shore in the south. Putin's wide-ranging briefing took place as Russian air attacks continued on June 19, with the Ukrainian Air Force saying it shot down or otherwise neutralized 88 of the 104 drones fired by Russia. One person was killed in an artillery barrage on Kostyantynivka, a Ukrainian-held city in the Donetsk region, the head of the city military administration, Serhiy Horbunov, said on Facebook. Five people were wounded in Russian artillery and drone strikes on the Dnipropetrovsk region, authorities said. The Russian Defense Ministry said its forces downed 85 Ukrainian drones over 11 Russian regions and Russian-occupied Crimea. In another sign that he is not ready to make concessions, Putin vowed that Moscow will 'demilitarize' Ukraine through diplomacy or force. At the talks in 2022 and in the recent negotiations, Russia has pushed for radically reducing the size of Ukraine's military, which Kyiv and its backers say would leave it defenseless. 'We will not allow Ukraine to have armed forces that would threaten the Russian Federation and its people,' he said. 'And if we fail to reach a settlement, we will achieve our goals by military means.' Asked about civilian deaths in Russian attacks on Ukraine, Putin repeated Moscow's claim that it does not target civilians, despite ample evidence to the contrary. 'The strikes were carried out against military industries, not residential quarters,' Putin said. The confirmed civilian death toll in Ukraine since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion is over 13,000, according to the UN, which says many of the growing number of civilian casualties have been caused by Russian long-range missile and drone attacks. Officials say the real civilian toll is like higher. Meanwhile, on June 19, Zelenskyy appointed Hennadiy Shapovalov as commander of Ukraine's land force, replacing Major General Mykhaylo Drapatiy, who resigned following a deadly Russian strike on a troop training area.
Bloomberg
an hour ago
- Bloomberg
NATO Offers to Tweak 5% Spending Goal to Win Spanish Approval
NATO has offered to tweak key language on ambitious defense spending targets to help win support from holdout Spain, before leaders of the military alliance gather on Tuesday. The draft statement to be adopted at the June 24-25 summit will be changed to 'allies' commit to spending 5% of GDP on defense from 'we' commit, according to people familiar with the talks.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Senior Russian official says Trump has started new war on Iran that will strengthen Khamenei
MOSCOW (Reuters) -A senior Russian official said on Sunday that U.S. President Donald Trump had started a new war by attacking Iran that would only strengthen Tehran's leaders by consolidating society around Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The Kremlin, which has a strategic partnership with Iran and also maintains close links to Israel, had repeatedly cautioned Washington that U.S. strikes on Iran would plunge the entire region into the "abyss". "Trump, who came in as a peacemaker president, has started a new war for the U.S.," said Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council, adding that "with this kind of success, Trump won't win the Nobel Peace Prize". "Iran's political regime has been preserved, and it is highly likely that it has become stronger," Medvedev said. "The people are consolidating around the spiritual leadership, even those who did not sympathise with it." Medvedev also said that Iran's nuclear infrastructure did not appear to be affected by the U.S. strikes, and that the U.S. was in danger of being drawn into a ground operation. President Vladimir Putin had repeatedly offered to mediate between the United States and Iran, though the Kremlin chief last week refused to discuss the possibility that Israel and the United States would kill Khamenei. Putin said that Israel had given Moscow assurances that Russian specialists helping to build two more reactors at the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran would not be hurt in air strikes. Russia's foreign ministry strongly condemned the U.S. attacks which it said had undermined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The United Nations Security Council must respond, Moscow said. "It is already obvious that a dangerous escalation has begun, fraught with further undermining of regional and global security," it said. "The risk of the conflict spreading in the Middle East, which is already gripped by multiple crises, has increased significantly." While Moscow has bought weapons from Iran for its war in Ukraine and signed a 20-year strategic partnership deal with Tehran earlier this year, their relationship since the 16th century, when Muscovy officially established relations with the Persian Empire, has at times been troubled. Inside Russia, there were calls for Russia to come to the aid of its partner and to supply Iran with the same support which Washington had given to Ukraine - including air defence systems, missiles and satellite intelligence. "It's time for us to help Tehran," said Russian businessman Konstantin Malofeyev. "And at the same time, to offer the United States and Iran diplomatic assistance in peace negotiations by appointing a special envoy for this. Two can play at this game." Jailed Russian nationalist Igor Girkin said that unless Russia supported Iran, the Islamic Republic would be bombed into the Stone Age by the United States and Israel and then plunged into chaos. "If Iran does not receive the necessary support from its allies, Russia and China, and very serious and significant support, then, most likely, within a month, its enemies will achieve this," Girkin said on Telegram.
