Defense expert Ko Colijn has been providing the Dutch with insights into armed conflicts for fifty years. This time, he discusses why the NATO summit became a flop for Ukraine.
The NATO summit in The Hague did yield something for Ukraine on the sidelines, but the official part became a flop for that country. NATO chief Mark Rutte was mainly busy sucking up to Donald Trump, also known as daddy. And that came at the expense of Ukraine, because otherwise Trump might get angry.
A meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs was hastily renamed a dinner of the Ukraine Council. This allowed the Ukrainian minister Andrii Sybiha to join in. On the second day, he and President Volodymyr Zelensky were hardly visible anymore.
At the previous NATO summit, last year in Washington, Ukraine was mentioned no less than 59 times in the final declaration. The final declaration in The Hague kept it to a thrifty two times. The tough texts from earlier (“whatever it takes” and “Ukraine will one day become a member of NATO”) were completely absent this time.
Rutte received praise for his “masterstroke” of replacing ‘we’ with ‘allies’ in the declaration on defense spending. That gave Spain the opportunity to circumvent the agreed 5 percent. Trump also felt that the US did not have to adhere to that 5 percent. Nobody spoke about the reluctance of Belgium and Slovakia.
Meanwhile, nobody noticed that countries can also circumvent aid to Ukraine. Outgoing Prime Minister Dick Schoof praised the eighteenth EU package of sanctions against Russia a day later. He did not mention that there was no tightening due to resistance from Slovakia and Hungary, but only an extension of existing measures. So it was not Zelensky, but Vladimir Putin (a little) who was satisfied.
Ukraine begs for more ammunition
Trump seemed a little touched only once during his press conference in The Hague. That was when the Ukrainian journalist Myroslava Petsa begged him to sell extra Patriot missiles to Kyiv. Sell, not donate, because she understood that Trump was all about hard dollars. Her husband, fighting against Russian drones somewhere in the trenches, desperately needed them. Trump would consider whether the US could spare a few. Cold shower or crocodile tears: shortly after the NATO summit, the US suspended the delivery of ammunition.
Ukraine desperately needs Patriot missiles, because only they can shoot down the best Russian missiles. There are now six complete systems in Ukraine to fire them with. A lot less than the 10 to 25 that Ukraine asked for last spring. And also very expensive: one complete launch system costs 2 billion dollars, a single missile costs 4 million dollars. Kyiv has now decided to make them themselves. American arms factories make about a thousand Patriot missiles a year, but Ukraine cannot wait until Trump has a change of heart.
In the meantime, other systems are doing surprisingly well in the fight. The slower and lower flying targets are regularly shot down by Ukraine, thanks to the Norwegian NAMSA artillery and the German Gepard system. The good old F-16s also seem to be doing well against Russian cruise missiles. Not unimportant, because Putin is shooting more and more of them.
That was the Russian answer to the summit in The Hague. In the last week of June alone, Russia fired a salvo of 114 missiles, 1,270 drones, and 1,100 ‘smart’ glide bombs at Ukraine. The targets consisted of schools and apartment buildings where civilians live. For that reason alone, the summit was ultimately a flop for Ukraine.