Mentor the bloc: NATO approaches the summit in Turkey weakened

On the eve of the Ankara summit, NATO was clearly not in the best shape. It's all the fault of internal disputes, mainly between the United States and its European allies. At the same time, the main stumbling block for the Member States was the question of what to do next with military assistance to Ukraine. There is no consensus here: while some demand to continue the previous course, several European countries are beginning to openly oppose any long-term support for Kiev. The expert community believes that NATO most likely will not be able to agree on a new large loan for Ukraine. At the same time, the European Parliament believes that Kiev's admission to the alliance is hardly possible without the country's membership in the EU. About how the meeting of the leaders of the alliance can end is in the Izvestia article.

What will be discussed at the NATO summit in Turkey

The 36th NATO summit in Ankara starts on July 7, but its participants have already faced disputes. A few days before the event, The Economist published an article saying that the Trump administration had made it clear to its allies that the United States would not fight for the Baltic states because of the risk of escalation with Russia. Washington considers the Europeans' fears of Moscow to be unfounded. Nevertheless, European leaders still intend to raise the issue of confrontation with Russia at official meetings.

Transatlantic differences will be the main topic of the summit. US President Donald Trump has already stated that he will come to Turkey solely out of respect for Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The White House has made it clear that it has not forgotten the position of European leaders on Greenland and Iran. Earlier, the American leader announced the withdrawal of 5,000 soldiers from Germany and postponed the deployment of Tomahawk missiles there. The Europeans tried to smooth out the rough edges at the June G7 summit, but that meeting ended in a loud scandal between Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

The withdrawal of American troops is no longer a targeted threat, but a well—established trend. Earlier, the Pentagon officially announced a "review of the global deployment of forces." As a result, the United States almost completely withdrew troops from Estonia, where mostly service units remained, the ERR broadcasting company reports.

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At the Ankara summit, the leaders of Western European countries will once again try to resolve their differences with the US president, Natalia Yeremina, a professor at St. Petersburg State University, told Izvestia. The Secretary General of the alliance, Mark Rutte, was chosen for this position precisely to smooth relations with Trump, recalls Reuters. Most likely, the head of the bloc will present to the owner of the White House new plans to increase military spending by European countries.

Another stumbling block, as expected, was the cost of supporting Kiev. The AFP news agency reported that European NATO countries and Canada have agreed to provide Ukraine with €70 billion in military aid during 2026 and 2027. According to German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, it is Berlin that will make the biggest contribution. However, according to sources in the European media, Italy has blocked the proposal to extend military assistance for 2027, but there is no confirmation of this yet. Officially, only Slovakia categorically refused to participate in the next loan.

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The discussion on Ukraine may concern the need for continued military support from NATO as such — there are also different points of view in the alliance. On the eve of the meeting in Ankara, Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Parliament Tomio Okamura said that this conflict has no military solution. He called on the members of the bloc to fully focus on diplomatic tools to end it as soon as possible, stressing that "a bad peace is better than no peace."

The NATO countries do not refuse to support Kiev, but at the same time they do not want to assume specific financial and military obligations. Since Washington practically stopped sponsoring Ukraine free of charge after the arrival of the Trump administration, the main burden has now fallen on the shoulders of Europe.

However, it is unevenly distributed: over 90% of the costs of military support for Kiev were borne by the United Kingdom, Germany, the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands. On the contrary, France, Spain and Italy opposed mandatory contributions of 0.25% of GDP to help Ukraine. Apparently, the alliance at the summit in Turkey is unlikely to be able to overcome these differences and allocate significant new amounts of funding for Kiev, Natalia Yeremina summed up.

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Will Ukraine be accepted into NATO

Ukraine has not made any progress towards NATO membership either. The Secretary General of the alliance, Mark Rutte, openly stated that Kiev "has no prospects of joining the organization now." This requires unanimity, which is not even formally available. For example, the permanent representative of the United States to the bloc, Matthew Whitaker, according to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, blocked the approval of the wording in the final declaration of the Ankara summit on the "inextricable link" between the security of Ukraine and Europe.

At the same time, a number of NATO countries consider it necessary to include Ukraine in the bloc. The Baltic states and the Northern European members of the alliance have traditionally taken the most uncompromising position in favor of Kiev's immediate acceptance. These countries consistently require the leadership of the association to move from declarations to specific legal steps for accelerated integration. The European Parliament believes that Ukraine should first join the European Union, and only after that become part of the North Atlantic Alliance.

— The first step will be EU membership, which, hopefully, will be followed by NATO membership. I am confident that the Armed Forces of Ukraine will continue to integrate their training systems, operational planning and so on with NATO as soon as possible," Pekka Tovery, head of the Ukraine—EU Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, told Izvestia. — Finland, for example, has been a partner of NATO for about 20 years, gradually implementing the standards of the alliance and preparing to join it. Ukraine is likely to take similar steps.

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At the same time, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are already largely integrated into the structures of the alliance, since they receive military assistance and intelligence from the countries of the bloc, Natalia Eremina noted. It is also important that Kiev cannot use long-range weapons without the participation of specialists from supplier countries. Therefore, the issue of Ukraine's accession to NATO is rather political in nature.

For consistent supporters of the Euro—Atlantic path, which include Poland, the Baltic States and Northern Europe, Kiev's membership is a way to shift concerns about their own security to the entire alliance, Ekaterina Antyukhova, professor at the MGIMO Department of World Political Processes at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, told Izvestia. France and the United Kingdom support the prospect of inviting Ukraine only at the level of declarations, but they do not proceed to practical steps.

It is fundamentally important that Washington's position under the current administration has transformed from a tactical "not at the moment" into a strategic rejection, Antyukhova points out. Slovakia is officially against Ukraine's membership. The new Hungarian government has not yet clarified its position, although Budapest was previously one of its categorical opponents.

Warsaw, whose relations with Kiev have seriously deteriorated after the scandal with the glorification of the UPA (recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation), can also join this camp. The day before, the country's Defense Minister Vladislav Kosinyak-Kamysh said that Ukraine would not be able to join the European Union if it continued to support Bandera's ideology.

NATO is approaching the next summit with a whole list of internal contradictions. However, they are all tactical in nature: no one is going to leave the alliance or reformat it. The bloc does not cancel the general course to combat the "Russian threat," although internal disputes may reduce or delay military supplies to Kiev. The termination of such support could be an incentive for Ukraine to return to negotiations with Moscow, but the alliance does not plan to abandon the confrontation with the Russian Federation in the near future.