As the recent Hague NATO summit opened, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte held a press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Rutte told Zelensky that current decisions on Ukraine are “really building on Washington, the summit last year, where we decided there is this irreversible path for Ukraine into NATO.” He then offers the vague assurance that “we are building that bridge as we speak.” Rutte then added, “Of course, I cannot disclose anything about the summit declaration.”
Zelensky, as if not hearing that qualification, says, “the decision of Washington summit which been last year very important, important that this direction is not changing.”
Zelensky publicly maintains that the direction is not changing. But it has already changed. NATO has moved on; Zelensky has not. The irreversible path is reversing.
Zelensky went to the Hague still pushing for NATO membership. But NATO lacks the necessary unanimity to grant it, and U.S. President Trump has already ruled it out. The issue of Ukrainian membership in NATO was not even on this year’s NATO summit agenda.
Zelensky, who “was treated as a VIP” at every NATO summit since Russia’s invasion, was “relegated to the background,” according to The Washington Post. He “was not feted as in past years,” The New York Times agrees. “He was not even the center of attention.” As the summit approached, it was not even clear Zelensky would attend. He attended the official dinner for NATO leaders hosted by the King of the Netherlands but, this year, was not invited to attend the plenary sessions.
The Ukraine-NATO council meeting that had been planned for heads of state to discuss the war with Russia was downgraded to the level of foreign ministers.
The U.S. has not announced any new military aid for Ukraine since Trump returned to office, and it has resisted pressure to impose new sanctions on Russia. On June 25, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio seemed to rule out new sanctions in the near future since, if the U.S. imposed them, they would lose their ability to negotiate, “to talk to them about the ceasefire.”
In the end, The Hague Summit Declaration barely mentioned Russia or its war with Ukraine. Whereas the 2024 Washington declaration said that “Russia bears sole responsibility for its war of aggression against Ukraine,” the 2025 Hague declaration declined to assign any such blame. Whereas the 2024 declaration said that “we will continue to support [Ukraine] on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership,” the 2025 Hague declaration contained not one word about Ukraine joining NATO.
The brief 2025 declaration referred only vaguely to Russia as a “long-term threat… to Euro-Atlantic security.” Not only was the “irreversible path to… NATO membership” dropped from the declaration, even military support for Ukraine failed to earn a section of its own. Support for Ukraine was buried in the section on members agreeing to commit 5% of GDP annually to defense.
And even here, the wording was a blow to Ukraine. The declaration states that “Allies reaffirm their enduring sovereign commitments to provide support to Ukraine, whose security contributes to ours.” The subtlety here is the inclusion of the word “sovereign.”
The inclusion of the word changes the commitment form a NATO wide commitment to a decision to be made individually by each member. As Ian Proud, who served as the Economic Counsellor at the British Embassy in Moscow from 2014 to 2019, explained to me, “The wording of Summit Communiques is combed over for weeks ahead of any Summit, with delegations pressing for what might, to the outsider, appear minor textual amendments. Hence, including the word ‘sovereign’ in the short Hague NATO Summit Communique was deliberate and loaded with meaning. Remove the word, and the sentence ‘Allies reaffirm their commitment to provide support to Ukraine’ would imply that support to Ukraine was a NATO-wide commitment. Include it, and the sentence takes on a whole new meaning, specific to each NATO member state, with the clear implication that support was a matter of national choice.”
Proud added that the wording of the declaration “commitments’ provides the ultimate get out clause for the Trump administration from providing continued financial support to Kyiv as the Europeans raise their game.”
The sadness of the moment is the danger pregnant in reality having left Zelensky’s narrative behind. NATO has moved passed membership for Ukraine, but Zelensky has not altered Ukraine’s demands or negotiating position to align itself with that reality. The continued demand in negotiations for NATO membership is the death of negotiations. The U.S. has been clear that they will not grant it. NATO has been clear in its actions that it will not grant it. And Russia will never grant it: it is the reason it went to war.
The 2025 NATO Summit Declaration clearly publishes the end of Ukraine’s NATO ambitions, at least for any foreseeable future. Zelensky clinging to the belief that NATO’s “direction is not changing” will bring only continued war to Ukraine with no gain. The Summit is a clear signal to Zelensky that for Ukraine to survive and prosper, he must drop Ukraine’s NATO bid.
The new reality emerging from the Hague Summit has very broad implications for Ukraine and its Western partners. Richard Sakwa, Emeritus Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, told me that “The recent NATO summit has exposed the growing division between what Ukraine’s current leadership wants and what the West is willing, or indeed able, to deliver.” He then explained the broader context. “This applies not only to the watered-down statement on Ukraine’s prospects for entering NATO, compared to the ringing endorsement of Ukraine’s NATO aspirations at the Washington jubilee summit in 2024, but also to Ukraine’s European Union membership. A growing number of member states are growing uncomfortable with the idea. This suggests,” he says, “that the expansion of the Political West, underway since the end of the Cold War, has reached its natural limits; while the Political West itself is increasingly fragmented.”
The NATO summit was a disappointing blow to Ukraine, whose leadership had been promised so much if they would stand up to Russia for the West. But Ukraine must now align itself with this new reality, abandon its NATO ambitions, and focus on negotiating the real issues that will keep alive its hopes for survival, security and prosperity in the future.
Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.
