Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep. It’s the last day of the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., which means the alliance’s communique—formally called the Washington Summit Declaration—is published, Russia and China are mad at NATO about it, and the allies are turning the final day of summit business to Ukraine before the barricades come up and traffic returns to normal in D.C.
Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: Ukraine leaves the NATO summit with an “irreversible” path to membership, former President Donald Trump wants to curb U.S. intelligence sharing with NATO if he returns to the White House, and the allies look to beef up their cyber and artificial intelligence capabilities.
What Can NATO Do for Ukraine?
Ukraine got a lot at the NATO summit—just not the one thing that it wanted.
For months in the run-up to the confab, Ukraine and its strongest backers pushed for Kyiv to receive a formal invitation to join NATO. Washington and Berlin quashed those plans early on.
So a lot of the summit’s work on Ukraine amounted to cobbling together consolation prizes for the country and filling long-standing gaps in its military aid requests, then tying it up as a major new support package.
To be clear, some of these new pledges represent important military aid that could provide real support to Ukraine on the battlefield. These include new Patriot air defense systems (something that Ukraine asked for months ago and is now finally getting after a deadly Russian strike on a Ukrainian children’s hospital), F-16 fighter jets from Denmark and the Netherlands, and even a squadron of MiG-29 fighters from Poland.
The Biden administration also championed what it called a “bridge” to NATO membership for Ukraine that will include ramping up joint training programs, creating a new NATO command structure to coordinate military aid flowing into Ukraine, and sending a permanent new alliance envoy to Kyiv.
But several alliance officials from Eastern Europe, while putting on a smile in public, say they’re disappointed that NATO couldn’t do more—including extending Ukraine that coveted formal invitation to join the alliance.
SitRep breaks down what Ukraine got at the Washington summit, by the numbers.
80. That’s the number of F-16 fighter jets that U.S. officials said Denmark and the Netherlands will eventually provide to Ukraine. The Danes will give 24 jets initially, and the Dutch will give 19, according to the Wall Street Journal. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken got the crowd at NATO’s public forum in Washington fired up when he announced that the first jets will get to Ukraine by the end of summer. And the U.S. administration said that Ukraine will be able to use the F-16’s air-to-air missiles to fire into Russia.
Ukraine will also get a new squadron of Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets from Poland. That could help if Ukraine tries to mount another counteroffensive against Russian lines at some point, NATO officials said, as Kyiv lacked the airpower to support its last major forward military push in 2023.
40. NATO allies committed to give Ukraine 40 billion euros ($43.3 billion) in military aid over the next year, according to the summit communique. What they haven’t figured out yet is who is going to give what.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged 3 billion pounds (about $3.9 billion) and confirmed that Ukraine could use long-range Storm Shadow missiles against Russian territory.
NATO also plans to set up a new command for Ukraine in Wiesbaden, Germany, that will coordinate and deconflict training and aid donations to the country and help with repairs, while the United States will continue to lead the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (also known as the Ramstein Format), where allies have made major aid pledges to Kyiv. The new NATO command will be led by a three-star U.S. general and have about 700 staff members, who will connect to weapons delivery points in Eastern Europe.
There will also be a new NATO envoy permanently stationed in Kyiv. But there’s one thing that NATO can’t provide: boots on the ground.
Dozens. The number of air defense batteries that NATO countries plan to give Ukraine. There’s a Patriot battery from Spain and components for one from Sweden. The United States, Germany, and Romania will send Ukraine additional Patriots, and the Netherlands and other countries will provide enough components to cobble together another battery.
There’s also an alphabet soup of other air defense systems coming to Ukraine. Norway and Germany are giving an IRIS-T air defense battery, and Norway is giving Ukraine about $93 million for air defense needs. Italy is giving a SAMP-T air defense system. NATO countries are also pledging NASAMS, HAWKs, and Gepards.
One. Enduring path to NATO membership—sort of.
In the final NATO summit document, alliance leaders said Ukraine was on an “irreversible” path to NATO membership—but the carefully worded passage it was buried in blunted some of the excitement.
After lauding the country for making progress on the “required democratic, economic, and security reforms,” the statement reads: “As Ukraine continues this vital work, we will continue to support it on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership. We reaffirm that we will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met.”
Andriy Yermak, the chief of Ukraine’s presidential cabinet, said onstage at the NATO Public Forum on the sidelines of the summit that he and the Ukrainian people were “happy” with the results of the summit.
“The language of the documents, it’s really strong,” he said. “We can see that the alliance made the real steps forward. I think that the next stop is [that] Ukraine needs to receive the invitation.”
When asked whether the “bridge” to NATO brings Ukraine closer, Yermak paused for a full six seconds. “Hmmmm,” he finally said, giving out a slight sigh. “When you’re living in the war, you have a little bit different [of a] ceiling,” he said.
On the Button
What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.
Intel blackout. Former U.S. President Donald Trump is considering cutting U.S. intelligence-sharing with NATO members if he returns to the White House, Politico reports, part of a raft of measures that the one-time commander in chief’s advisors are considering to cut support to the 32-nation alliance. The plans, which were conveyed to senior European officials by Trump advisors, came up on the sidelines of the NATO summit, and both U.S. and European officials fear that it could hinder Europe’s ability to defend against another Russian attack if the Kremlin moves its military gaze beyond Ukraine.
Crisis averted. The United States and Germany foiled a Russian government plot to kill the boss of German weapons maker Rheinmetall earlier this year, CNN reports. The plot was one of a series of planned actions by Russian intelligence services to assassinate defense industry executives as part of a wider covert campaign of sabotage operations across Europe.
Artificial intelligence. NATO is looking to coordinate its collective AI capabilities while placing shared guardrails around the technology as it grapples with the high-tech arms race against the likes of Russia and China.
“We work … very closely with NATO specifically on how we actually have digital transformation in a responsible way,” Radha Iyengar Plumb, the Pentagon’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer, told our colleague Rishi Iyengar onstage at the FP Security Forum. Plumb pointed to alliance initiatives such as the Data and AI Review Board and its Responsible AI Toolkits, both of which set out a baseline for the responsible adoption of such tools.
It’s an effort to embed NATO countries’ shared democratic values in the adoption of technology, Plumb added, especially as adversaries such as China and Russia race to develop their own capabilities.
“I don’t think there is a silver bullet here that’s going to help us ensure that everyone adheres to the same guidelines and guardrails,” she said. “There’s a real case to be made for the values that underlie how we use and adopt that technology, and that’s where the U.S. and our allies in NATO are really looking to lay out explicitly.”
Cyber alliances everywhere. The war in Ukraine, which has showcased Russia’s advanced hacking capabilities such as malware targeting energy facilities and cyberattacks against Kyiv’s government systems, has driven home the increasing role of cyber in hybrid warfare and the constant borderless battles taking place in cyberspace.
NATO used its summit communique to warn of cyber threats from not only Russia, but also China, including the prospect of the two countries working together as part of their growing strategic partnership. NATO is countering with cyber alliances of its own, establishing a new Integrated Cyber Defense Centre while expanding cyber cooperation in the Indo-Pacific with partners such as Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea.
Private sector companies that have faced the brunt of Russian and Chinese hacking efforts warn that such operations are expanding in both scale and scope. “We’re seeing nation-state actors operate across the world in cyberspace, and we don’t see that threat vector going down anytime soon,” Robert Blair, Microsoft’s general manager for national security and emerging technologies, told an audience at the summit. Microsoft’s systems and users worldwide face more than 345 million cyberattacks every day, he said, and 40 percent of nation-state cyberattacks worldwide target critical infrastructure systems.
“And these attacks are not just prolific—they’re becoming more advanced,” he added.
Snapshot
U.S. President Joe Biden (right) speaks alongside NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg during a toast at a dinner for NATO members in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on July 10. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Put On Your Radar
Monday, July 15: Rwanda begins two days of presidential and parliamentary elections. Syria holds legislative elections that experts expect to be rigged in favor of Bashar al-Assad’s Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party.
Tuesday, July 16: The four-day Aspen Security Forum begins in Colorado with a session featuring Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China. Also, the Pacific Islands leaders meeting takes place in Tokyo, with representatives from 18 Pacific island nations expected to attend.
Wednesday, July 17: Day two of the Aspen Security Forum is headlined by an interview with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Thursday, July 18: CIA Director Bill Burns, U.S. Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth, NATO Supreme Allied Commander and U.S. European Command chief Gen. Christopher Cavoli, U.S. Southern Command chief Gen. Laura Richardson, and U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine’s Economic Recovery Penny Pritzker speak on panels at Aspen.
Friday, July 19: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken; U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan; U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown; and U.S. Sens. Chris Coons, John Cornyn, and Dan Sullivan headline the final day of the Aspen Security Forum.
Quote of the Day
“The Washington Summit Declaration of July 10 mentions ‘the irreversible path of Ukraine’ to NATO. For Russia, 2 possible ways of how this path ends are acceptable: either Ukraine disappears, or NATO does. Still better, both.”
– Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev lashes out at both NATO and Ukraine in response to the summit communique.
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