Under the leadership of US President Joe Biden, NATO unveiled a series of new commitments to Ukraine at its three-day summit in Washington, DC, this week, marking the 75th anniversary of the military alliance.
“Autocrats want to overthrow the world order” and “terrorist groups” continue to hatch “evil plans,” while Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks to wipe “Ukraine off the map,” Biden said Wednesday.
“But make no mistake, Ukraine can and will stop Putin, especially with our full and collective support,” the U.S. leader added, as NATO leaders mobilized more military and financial support for the war-torn European country while pledging for kyiv’s future in the bloc.
Here’s what Ukraine got from the summit, more than two years after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its small neighbor — and parts of the world that NATO chose to ignore.
What did NATO promise Ukraine at the summit?
- The bloc said it would equip Ukraine with several additional strategic air defense systems, including four additional Patriot batteries and a SAMP/T defense system.
- NATO leaders also pledged at least $43 billion in military aid to Ukraine.
- The alliance members also announced other individual and joint steps to strengthen Ukraine’s security.
- The United States, the Netherlands and Denmark have announced that the first NATO-supplied F-16 fighter jets will be in the hands of Ukrainian military pilots by this summer. The United States has also announced that it will deploy long-range missiles to Germany in 2026, in response to EU concerns about Russia’s growing threat to Europe.
- kyiv has also long been in the running for a seat in the transatlantic alliance. While differences persist among member states, the summit declaration asserts that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO” and that the country is on “an irreversible path toward full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.”
- NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, however, stressed that Ukraine would not join immediately, but when the war with Russia was over.
Will Gaza be at the NATO summit?
The war in Gaza was largely ignored at the Washington summit.
NATO’s 38-point joint statement released Wednesday made no mention of the conflict, except to say that “conflict, fragility and instability in Africa and the Middle East” directly affect NATO’s security. Biden and most European leaders have also been silent on Gaza.
But some leaders have spoken out.
Yosuf Alabarda, an analyst and retired Turkish colonel, said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reminded Western leaders in his speech Tuesday that NATO values were being trampled in Gaza, values that NATO leaders said were being violated by Russia and China.
“Erdogan clearly said in his speech: what happened to your Western values in Gaza?” Alabarda told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“In front of the world, a massacre is taking place in Gaza,” he said, adding that NATO had largely ignored this fact, choosing instead to focus on Ukraine.
Spain also had scathing words for its alliance counterparts, calling on the bloc to show the same “unity and coherence” on Gaza that it has shown on Ukraine.
“We cannot be accused of applying double standards that would weaken our support for Ukraine. On the contrary, we demand the same unity and coherence for Gaza that we demand in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told NATO heads of state at a session of the Atlantic Council, according to Spanish press reports based on sources in the Prime Minister’s Office.
“If we tell our people that we support Ukraine because we defend international law, we must do the same for Gaza. If we demand respect for international law in Ukraine, we must demand it in Gaza as well,” Sanchez insisted.
Tel Aviv Tribune’s Mike Hanna, reporting from the summit on Wednesday, said the lack of discussion on Gaza was “glaring”, particularly with the US announcement that day that it would resume deliveries of 500-pound bombs to Israel.
Has NATO signaled any other policy changes?
The 32-nation bloc did not appear to stray too far from its previous policies at this year’s summit, continuing to give its full support to Ukraine and portraying Russia, China, Iran and North Korea as the biggest threats to global security.
But some changes have appeared.
China: The alliance has stepped up its rhetoric against China, accusing it of being a “decisive facilitator of Russia’s war against Ukraine” through its “large-scale support for Russia’s defense industrial base.” The bloc has also accused Iran and North Korea of fueling the war by providing direct military support to Russia.
Georgia: Relations between the country and the West have deteriorated in recent years, with NATO warning in May that Tbilisi’s controversial new law on foreign agents was a step backwards from Georgia’s ambitions to integrate into Europe and join NATO. Since 2008, Georgia has been among a small group of countries that NATO says will one day join the alliance – if they meet a series of conditions.
However, at the NATO summit this week, the declaration that leaders agreed to was silent on Georgia’s path to joining the alliance, although it did mention Ukraine, Moldova and Bosnia-Herzegovina, the other candidates for membership.
Has the new British government affected its support for Ukraine?
The summit was the first opportunity for newly elected British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to discuss his government’s foreign policy as well as bilateral relations with allied leaders.
On Ukraine, Starmer pledged that his Labour government would continue the previous Conservative administration’s support for kyiv.
According to Steven Seegel, a professor at the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, a Labor government could deepen those ties with Ukraine on all three fronts of military, financial and humanitarian diplomacy.
“Starmer has had a positive effect with his high-profile visits to Ukraine… He met personally with (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelenskyy on several occasions. I remember his trips to Irpin and Bucha in February 2023, to see Russian war crimes up close; those were the most significant,” Seegel told Tel Aviv Tribune.
Do Biden’s domestic challenges affect NATO?
Biden’s political struggles, however, weigh heavily on the bloc’s future.
Serious questions about Biden’s age and fitness for office have been raised nationally in recent days, following a debate against Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump in which the incumbent appeared lost and unable to communicate effectively.
Trump is leading Biden in polls in key states heading into the November election. He has threatened to pull the United States, a founding member of NATO and a major donor, out of the alliance and has strongly opposed any further aid to Ukraine.
