NATO’s declaration that was released during its summit in The Hague on Wednesday made no mention of Ukraine’s potential future membership in the alliance, a departure from the declarations issued over the previous two years.
In its mention of Ukraine, the brief declaration said allies would “reaffirm their enduring sovereign commitments to provide support to Ukraine, whose security contributes to ours, and, to this end, will include direct contributions towards Ukraine’s defense and its defense industry when calculating Allies’ defense spending.”
NATO’s 2024 declaration, issued during its summit in Washington, stated that Ukraine was on an “irreversible” path toward NATO membership, but it offered no concrete timeline. In Vilnius in 2023, NATO said it would support Ukraine’s “reforms on its path towards future membership,” but also provided no timeline.
During the Vilnius summit, Zelensky fumed over the lack of a real guarantee of Ukrainian NATO membership. But this year, the lack of any mention of Ukrainian NATO membership barely made the news, as the Trump administration has already ruled it out since one of Moscow’s main motives for invading Ukraine was the country’s alignment with the Western military alliance, a fact acknowledged by the previous NATO chief, Jens Stoltenberg.
While there was no commitment toward Ukrainian NATO membership, the NATO-Russia proxy war continues to rage despite President Trump’s campaign promises to end the war and his contentious meeting with Zelensky that occurred in the Oval Office in February.
After meeting with Zelensky on Wednesday, Trump said that he may send additional Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine. “They do want to have the anti-missile, missiles. As they call them the Patriots, and we’re going to see if we can make some available,” he told reporters at a press conference. “They are very hard to get. We need them too, we were supplying them to Israel, and they’re very effective.”
It’s unclear if Trump is considering sending more Patriots to Ukraine as part of a military aid package financed by the US or if he would sell the systems. Zelensky said he told Trump that Ukraine was ready to “buy this equipment and support American weapons manufacturers” and that “Europe can help.”
