Trump gets king’s treatment at NATO summit while Ukraine sits on the sidelines
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — As NATO leaders convened in The Hague for a two-day summit on June 24–25, allies and Kyiv braced for the first annual meeting since U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to office.
With the Israel-Iranian conflict dominating the news and the summit agenda focused on the new 5% defense spending target, Ukraine no longer took center stage.
This was chiefly because of one man: Trump has shown little appetite for ramping up military assistance for Ukraine, and there are growing fears he might disengage from the war altogether.
He has also ruffled the feathers of his NATO allies by publicly doubting the U.S. commitment to Article 5.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte set out to demonstrate that transatlantic unity remains strong — even if that meant appeasing Trump with flattery and deprioritizing potentially divisive topics like Ukraine.
This shift was underscored by the summit’s final statement, which offered little more than stale words of comfort to the war-torn country, even as Russia launched new large-scale attacks against its cities.
President Volodymyr Zelensky did not leave the summit empty-handed, however. He got his much-desired meeting with Trump, which seemed to have gone smoothly.
Rutte also sought to reassure Kyiv that support for Ukraine holds, stressing that allies have committed some 35 billion euros ($40 billion) in aid to Ukraine this year so far, about 10 billion euros more than in the first half of last year.
But it hasn’t dispelled the sense that an era is ending — one in which Ukraine’s struggle against Russia held an unquestioned place at the center of NATO’s agenda.
Ukraine's small victories
The NATO summit wasn’t a complete failure for Ukraine. In fact, the most pessimistic rumors swirling around in the lead-up to the event did not come true.
Zelensky did, after all, receive an invitation to the summit, dispelling speculation that Ukraine would be left out due to opposition from the U.S. He also managed to have a face-to-face meeting with Trump for the first time since their brief talk in the Vatican in April, rectifying the missed opportunity at the G7 summit.
“Everybody understands that the attack against Ukraine is an attack against us as well. Ukraine belongs to Europe.”
Though details of the meeting are scarce, Trump left the talk uncharacteristically critical of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Responding to a journalist during a press conference, the U.S. president acknowledged it is “possible” Putin may have territorial ambitions beyond Ukraine – a rare admission for Trump, who always professed his trust in the Russian leader.
"I consider him (Putin) a person I think is misguided," Trump said.
"I think it’s a great time to end it (war). I’m going to speak to Vladimir Putin, see if we can get it ended," Trump added. "He (Zelensky) is fighting a brave battle, it's a tough battle."
Trump also carefully signaled support for sending Ukraine additional missiles for Patriot air defense systems, though no concrete commitment was made. Asked about further air defense assistance by a Ukrainian journalist whose husband is a soldier fighting in Ukraine, Trump, in a rare show of sympathy toward Ukrainians, acknowledged her distress over Russia’s escalating aerial attacks.
"They (Ukraine) do want to have the anti-missile missiles, as they call them, the Patriots, and we're going to see if we can make some available," Trump said.
Other NATO leaders reaffirmed their steadfast support for Ukraine as it continues to resist Russia’s full-scale invasion, now in its fourth year.
“Everybody understands that the attack against Ukraine is an attack against us as well. Ukraine belongs to Europe,” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsakhna told the Kyiv Independent during an interview at the summit.
Zelensky’s rhetoric was focused on pressuring Russia to accept a just peace and on raising more international funding for the Ukrainian defense industry.
Individual countries and other partners responded. The Netherlands and Norway pledged hundreds of millions to the Ukrainian defense industry, while the EU confirmed that its new, ambitious $175-billion SAFE defense spending program will be open to Kyiv.
But as the summit unfolded, it became increasingly clear that the spotlight is on Trump.
Charm offensive, aimed at Trump
To say that The Hague summit took place at a precarious moment would be an understatement.
NATO is gripped by what is arguably its greatest existential crisis yet, and the most challenging security situation since the Cold War.
Since taking office, Trump has signaled plans to reduce military presence in Europe and cast doubt on his commitment to Article 5 – including just before his trip to the summit.
As Trump’s attention wanders away from Europe and Ukraine to the Israel-Iran conflict and other regions, Europeans are left to grapple with the fears that they might have to face Russian aggression on their own.
“Mr President, dear Donald, Congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran, that was truly extraordinary, and something no one else dared to do. It makes us all safer.”
Perhaps that is why NATO leaders were so dead set on bringing Trump to the summit.
As the Kyiv Independent learned from a Ukrainian official, member countries pulled out all the stops to get Trump to attend, giving him a king’s treatment during the dinner and keeping the summit deliberately short.
Leading this charm offensive was the secretary general himself.
“Mr President, dear Donald, Congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran, that was truly extraordinary, and something no one else dared to do. It makes us all safer,” Rutte wrote in a message to Trump ahead of the summit, which the U.S. president promptly published.
“Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win,” he continued, referring to an agreement to raise the defense spending benchmark to 5% of GDP in a style strikingly similar to Trump’s.
Despite being asked by a journalist whether the revelation of this text was not embarrassing for him, Rutte only doubled down during the summit, jokingly referring to Trump as a “daddy” during a joint briefing.
The summit’s focus on defense spending was likely a deliberate offering to Trump, who has lambasted European allies as underpaying freeloaders. When Rutte managed to get a unanimous agreement on the new spending target despite protests from Spain, he had a big win to present to Trump.
"Your leadership on this has already produced $1 trillion in extra spending from European allies since 2016. And decisions today will produce trillions more for common defense,” Rutte told Trump during the summit.
Trump has not been alone in this criticism. NATO’s eastern members, who devote considerably more to defense than their western and southern partners, echoed the sentiment.
“I totally agree with President Trump… Europe must pay more, Europe must take more responsibility for its own defense,” Tsakhna said.
“Europe has been like an old, lazy cat who was just waiting for something bad to happen, and the U.S. would come and solve the problems.”
Rutte's strategy seemed to have paid off. Trump appeared in good spirits, praising the new defense pledge while enjoying a flurry of questions from journalists that, in the absolute majority, focused on recent U.S. strikes on Iran.
Trump also signed off on the final statement that reaffirmed commitment to Article 5, mollifying his earlier comments.
Ukraine sidelined
While the final communique of the NATO summit in Washington last year was 38 paragraphs long, with six devoted to support for Ukraine, this year’s joint declaration was a mere five paragraphs.
The document did name Russia as a threat to the Euro-Atlantic security and reaffirmed support for Kyiv, but stopped short of condemning Moscow, mentioning Ukraine’s NATO aspirations, or offering any concrete new assistance.
This did not come as a surprise. Already in the runup to the summit, Bloomberg reported that the joint communique would omit these topics to avert friction with the U.S. president, who has been averse to offending Russia.
Rutte used the summit to repeat the familiar pledge that Ukraine’s path toward NATO is “irreversible,” but it was obvious that Kyiv’s accession, openly opposed by Trump, would not see any development in the near future.
Even as Russia launched a brutal aerial attack against Dnipro during the summit, which killed 19 people and injured 300, NATO offered Ukraine little but words.
What Ukraine received at this year’s NATO summit was a far cry from the bold pledges made last year in Washington.
But the meeting passed without any visible friction between Trump and his Ukrainian and European partners, with Ukraine even grabbing a few modest wins.
In the era of Trump, that might be a success of itself.
Asami Terajima contributed to reporting.
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