NATO Summit 2025: Will the Alliance Stand with Ukraine?

The NATO Summit 2025 in The Hague promises to be a moment of truth for the Alliance. Will it be able to overcome the crisis of unity and respond to the Russian threat?

The NATO summit, which will take place on June 24-25, 2025, in The Hague, is positioned as a moment of unity, adaptation, and strengthening of the Alliance in the face of the challenges of the 21st century. But in reality, it increasingly resembles a crisis point.

The lack of transparency in decision-making, the disappearance of the Ukraine issue, discussions about defense budgets, and Donald Trump's unclear position all create the impression that NATO will be balancing between making overdue decisions and lacking a strategic vision for its own future.

How Real is the Russian Threat to NATO Countries?

It is at this moment that the Alliance should demonstrate leadership, clarity, and determination. Instead, political uncertainty hangs in the air — with a clear military threat from Russia, but without an equivalent political response. It is telling that it was at this very moment that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov gave an interview to the Russian news agency TASS, in which he voiced further demands on NATO. “Resolving the conflict with the West is impossible without stopping NATO's expansion. Reducing NATO's contingent in Eastern Europe would benefit the security of the continent”, Ryabkov said. It is interesting that before the start of full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine, the same Ryabkov had already issued ultimatums that “NATO must leave Eastern Europe”, and we all know how that ended.

In fact, Russia is directly threatening NATO countries. And this is no longer just words. According to The Guardian, Major General Sami Nurmi, head of the Finnish Defense Forces' strategic department, said that the military is “very closely” monitoring Moscow's maneuvers and that their job, as part of the NATO alliance, is to “prepare for the worst.” Satellite images recently published in the New York Times show the expansion of Russian military infrastructure near the Finnish border, including rows of tents, military equipment, the reconstruction of fighter jet shelters, and the restoration of a previously unused helicopter base. “They (the Russians – ed.) are changing structures, and we are seeing moderate preparations for infrastructure development near our borders,” Nurmi said.

The threat from Russia to NATO countries, which Ukraine has been talking about in recent years, is no longer just a verbal construct or a distant prospect, but something increasingly real.

The Russians are clearly preparing for a war, which may initially be hybrid. Recently, the head of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND), Bruno Kahl, said that Russia plans to test the effectiveness of NATO's Article 5. According to him, German intelligence has concrete evidence of the Kremlin's preparations for potential aggression against the Alliance.

The head of the BND stressed that Moscow no longer believes in the reliability of NATO's collective defense system, in particular Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which guarantees mutual protection in the event of an attack on one of the Alliance's member states. According to him, the Kremlin may try to test this guarantee in practice. Kahl clarified that this “does not mean that we are expecting an invasion of large tank battalions from East to West.” We are talking about a hybrid invasion, the capture of a small territory, which would demonstrate NATO's weakness and ineffectiveness.

Russia does not need to capture any NATO member state yet. Moreover, it does not need to send a large army, declare war, or in any other way openly show aggression. Saboteurs, spies, and the “fifth column” are what can be used in the first stage of aggression. Well, then the question of the position of the leading countries of the “West” will arise. And this is far from clear at the moment.

Will the Alliance Countries Reach Agreement on the Issue of Defense Budgets?

Increasing defense spending by NATO members has been discussed for a long time, but it got a new boost with the election of US President Donald Trump, who directly set this task for the allies. He has also repeatedly said that the US should not have to defend allies who do not spend enough on their own defense. Therefore, the issue of defense spending is now key to maintaining Euro-Atlantic unity.

At the same time, the question of increasing defense spending to 5% of GDP has become a litmus test that has exposed deep tensions between key members of the Alliance. The idea of increasing minimum defense spending from the current 2% to 5% by 2032 seems ambitious, but is already meeting with resistance. Spain has publicly opposed the initiative of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, noting that it is not only economically unrealistic but also politically toxic.

This reaction points to a deeper problem: after decades of comfort, European countries are not ready for a radical transformation of their military budgets, even against the backdrop of a new reality — full-scale war in Eastern Europe. Thus, there is a growing risk that NATO will lose internal trust — between those who are willing to invest in defense and those who consider it an excessive concession to pressure from the US.

Will the Russian-Ukrainian War Be the Final Argument for Strengthening the Alliance?

The fact that the final communiqué of the summit, which is to be adopted following its conclusions, makes no mention of Ukraine's membership prospects is not merely a diplomatic nuance, but an alarming signal. After the 2008 Bucharest summit, at which Ukraine and Georgia received a declarative assurance that they would “become members of NATO,” the situation has remained virtually unchanged.

The fact that this issue is not even being discussed at the summit level indicates a new consensus — a consensus of deferred accession, which is in fact a consensus to freeze integration. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys diplomatically but firmly confirmed: "There are no plans to invite Ukraine to join NATO at the summit. This issue is not even on the agenda." This vacuum creates a risk not only for Kyiv's trust in its Western partners, but also for regional security in general. After all, Ukraine is becoming the only country in Europe that is effectively fighting on NATO's flanks but remains outside the framework of security guarantees.

In the draft communiqué, NATO again recognizes Russia as a “long-term threat.” This is an important signal about the consistency of the Alliance's policy. But from Ukraine’s perspective, this is not enough. This wording must be backed up by a clear policy of deterrence and counteraction in all areas: military, cybersecurity, information, and energy.

The problem is that, apart from recognizing the threat, the Alliance's specific strategy for dealing with Russia remains fragmented. Some of the burden of deterrence has been taken on by individual countries: the United Kingdom, Poland, and the Baltic states. But until there is an alliance-wide program to counter Kremlin aggression at all levels, statements about the “threat” may turn into a ritual formality — without consequences.

In the end, it is difficult to assess the upcoming NATO summit as anything other than evidence of the deep crisis in which the Euro-Atlantic idea finds itself. There is a clear lack of solidarity and a shared vision of the future among the allies, as well as unity in understanding the challenges facing NATO and the need to respond to them.

Perhaps NATO is now more divided than ever, and everyone feels it. Including the Alliance's main adversary, Russia, which is clearly preparing provocations against NATO. And these provocations may well soon escalate into hybrid aggression while internal disputes continue within NATO itself.

Petro Oleshchuk, political scientist, Ph.D, expert at the United Ukraine Think Tank