The organizers of the NATO summit in The Hague, scheduled for June 24-25, faced a dilemma: how to plan the meetings so that Volodymyr Zelenskyʼs presence would not provoke Donald Trump.
Reuters reports this.
The alliance plans to keep the upcoming summit short and limit discussions on Ukraine. It is not yet clear whether they will call Russia a threat or express support for Kyiv at least in a short final statement. And the promise to develop a new strategy towards Moscow has been put on the back burner, the agency notes.
NATO has not yet confirmed whether Zelensky has been invited at all. Diplomats say the Ukrainian president may have to settle for a pre-summit dinner hosted by King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands.
Cautious steps are being taken to avoid angering Washington, and even more so to avoid a repeat of the February conflict in the White House between Trump and Zelensky, which nearly destroyed the international coalition in support of Kyiv.
NATOʼs European members are keen to demonstrate their steadfast support for Ukraine, but they are also wary of angering an unpredictable US president who stunned them with threats to leave the alliance seven years ago.
If Zelensky does not attend the summit in some form, it will be "at the very least a PR disaster," an anonymous senior NATO diplomat admitted.
Donald Trump is expected to score a major diplomatic victory in The Hague, with allies likely to heed his long-standing criticism of insufficient defense spending and agree to increase spending.
Unlike the Allianceʼs two previous annual summits, this time the leaders do not plan to hold a formal meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council (NUC). A Reuters source says an alternative to the NUC could be a working dinner with foreign or defense ministers.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte confirmed that he had invited Ukraine to the summit. However, he declined to say whether the invitation applied to Zelensky himself.
"It is important that Ukraine is adequately represented at the next NATO summit in The Hague. This will be the right signal to Russia," Volodymyr Zelensky wrote after meeting with Rutte on June 2.
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