It’s published •update
All 32 NATO allies are meeting in The Hague for the Annual Leader Summit, where NATO Executive Director Mark Latte told reporters that Russia was the “most important and direct threat facing the alliance.”
However, in contrast to last year, the focus on Russian Ukraine’s full-scale invasion has diminished significantly from formal debate.
Instead, the summit pursues a narrower ambition, rather than pushing its allies to commit to spending 5% of its GDP on defense.
“We know that the status of the United States has changed, so we know that it has changed at the NATO summit,” Dutch Defense Minister Reuben Breckelmans told Euroneus.
“Of course, the main topic is new, where 5% is this historic step for our defense. But Ukraine remains equally important to us,” he said.
Ukrainian President Zelensky is attending a dinner with Dutch King Willem Alexander with his leader and is expected to meet President Trump on the sidelines of the summit.
However, this year he will not be attending the North Atlantic Council of the National and Chiefs of Government.
In contrast, NATO Summit Ukraine under the Biden administration last year was given a “irreversible” guarantee of its path to membership. The allies assured Kiev that it was on the “indestructible bridge” that they would join the alliance.
Jason Israel, a former member of the Biden administration’s National Security Council and senior defense director, signaled that “Trump wanted to take the bridge from the table that cannot be demolished from the start.”
“If I were in Ukraine, of course I would be nervous about how this is unfolding at the moment,” he said.
Despite the fact that the US still provides important intelligence to Ukraine, there is growing acceptance that it will no longer provide Ukraine with deadly weapons similar to those donated by the Biden administration.
“The real problem is that the US does not view Ukraine’s security as essential to European security, and our European allies do that,” said Kurt Volker, former Ukraine representative of U.S. during the last Trump administration.
Europe feels that if Putin is allowed to win in Ukraine or if Ukraine cannot survive as a sovereign independent state, they are a major security threat to Europe and NATO,” he said before the summit at an event hosted by the European Centre for Policy Analysis (CEPA).
Europe “considers the need to support Ukraine as essential to our safety through NATO, so the US simply doesn’t see it that way,” Volker said.
At the same time, NATO officials have warned that Russia continues to make profits around Smie Oblast and eastern Ukraine, but their ratings do not predict that Ukraine will be surrounded.
Instead, it is expected to continue with high withdrawal rates and slow, long-term competition.
This is despite the extremely high casualty rate. NATO says the loss of Russian troops has exceeded 1 million since the start of a full-scale invasion.
Russia is currently down from its peak in January at 1,500,” they said.
