NATO summit ‘grim sign' for Kiev
The recent NATO summit signaled a bleak outlook for Kiev's hopes of sustained Western support as the US-led bloc turned its attention toward US President Donald Trump, The New York Times has reported, in a feature-style review of the gathering.
NATO chief Mark Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister, hosting the event at The Hague, pledged continued support for what he described as Ukraine's 'irreversible path to membership.'
However Kiev's aspirations were notably absent from the final summit communiqué, which offered only a brief mention of the bloc's 'enduring sovereign commitments to provide support to Ukraine,' according to the newspaper.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, who was invited to the two-day summit, was 'not feted as in years past,' the newspaper noted. Nor was he 'the center of attention' anymore, it added. A meeting between Trump and Zelensky on the sidelines of the event also failed to produce any 'specific promises,' the outlet wrote.
After the meeting, which lasted roughly 50 minutes, Trump denied that the two had discussed a potential ceasefire between Kiev and Moscow, contradicting an earlier statement by Zelensky.
'Ukraine? What's Ukraine?' Michael John Williams, a former NATO adviser, exclaimed to the NYT. 'The Europeans were saying how committed they are to Ukraine… But there was also really an attempt to keep controversial issues off the table. Ukraine wasn't the front and center discussion it has been.'
The summit was 'choreographed' to address 'the security interests of NATO allies – and then comes Ukraine,' Liana Fix, a Europe expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, told NYT on Wednesday, published in a separate piece.
'There was no meaningful deliverable for Ukraine,' added Torrey Taussig, a former Biden-era Europe director at the National Security Council.
This year's meeting marked a sharp departure from last year's summit, where Ukraine's NATO membership was on the agenda. This time, NATO members committed only to increasing defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035, in response to what they called a 'long-term threat posed by Russia to Euro-Atlantic security.'
On Wednesday, Rutte told reporters simply that 'our aim is to keep Ukraine in the fight today.'
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