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NATO will, in one way or another, reaffirm its support for Kyiv and point to a new Ukraine-NATO Council at the foreign-minister level on Tuesday. | Robin Van Lonkhuijsen\/EPA<\/p>\nNATO will, in one way or another, reaffirm its support for Kyiv and point to a new Ukraine-NATO Council at the foreign-minister level on Tuesday. | Robin Van Lonkhuijsen\/EPA<\/p>\n
U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker credited Trump with dragging the alliance to the 5 percent threshold: \u201cThanks to the bold leadership of President Donald J. Trump, NATO is on track to achieve a historic commitment,\u201d he said Monday.<\/p>\n
The minimalist approach has also affected how the alliance is handling Ukraine<\/a>. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to be at the dinner Tuesday night \u2014 a nod to his central role \u2014 but he\u2019s not invited to Wednesday\u2019s closed-door leaders’ session.\u00a0That’s a big change from earlier summits when the alliance locked arms with Zelenskyy in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion.<\/p>\n But Trump’s antipathy toward the Ukrainian president now makes that untenable.<\/p>\n NATO will, in one way or another, reaffirm its support for Kyiv and point to a new Ukraine-NATO Council at the foreign-minister level on Tuesday. Aid to Ukraine will now count toward national defense spending, a symbolic win. But there\u2019s no talk of membership timelines or expanded guarantees, despite a statement that Ukraine’s eventual path<\/a> to join NATO is still \u201cirreversible\u201d\u00a0 \u2014 and that\u2019s not lost on anyone.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a good path that has been found, under the current circumstances, to give the Ukraine issue a prominent place at this summit,\u201d a senior German official said. \u201cEven more important is that the final declaration includes the continued support of NATO partners for Ukraine. That was important to us \u2014 we wanted to agree on that among the 32, not in smaller formats.\u201d<\/p>\n