Quietly Abandoning a Pilfered and Destroyed Ukraine

The 2025 NATO Summit at The Hague

Published: 2025-06-27

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The 2025 NATO Summit

The declaration from the this year's annual NATO summit ended the "unending" and began the optionally "enduring" support for now bankrupt (consistently defaulting on debts) Ukraine. The political project to "weaken Russia" via provoking it into a proxy war has failed. Ukraine is being quietly discarded.

Ukraine was mentioned once in the declaration in the final sentence of point 3 (of 5):

Allies reaffirm their enduring sovereign commitments to provide support to Ukraine, [blather]

[NATO declaration]

Former British diplomat Ian Proud noted that the key term was 'sovereign', to which we shall return. The 2025 declaration's wordage came in at a tidy 425, down from the 5300+ firehose of 2024.

5 Bullet Points

Point 1 "reaffirmed" the NATO nations' "ironclad commitment" to the same Article 5 which the day before the summit US President Trump informed them had "multiple definitions". Trump committed to "being their friends" rather than any particular definition of collective security. That remark may be the line historians draw under the end of NATO.

The editor which chose the title for Ian Proud's article, and various media commentators, aghast at the betrayal of Ukraine, have forgotten in a few months that which then new US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth dictated to European Ministers of Defence on February 12th, 2025:

Safeguarding European security must be an imperative for European members of NATO. As part of this Europe must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and nonlethal aid to Ukraine.

[Hegseth]

The message was clear. The US has bigger fish to fry (China). Ukraine is a European problem. Deal with it. The removal of the Ukraine narrative from the NATO declaration is a restatement of US policy. It cares not for what its vassals think or say.

Point 2 of the declaration named Russia as enemy number one, followed by "terrorism". One wonders what the heads of state of the NATO alliance understood by the US+Israel unprovoked war of aggression against Iran, or the 629 days of Israel's genocide in Gaza. Multiple "stalwart" NATO member states (US, UK, Germany at least) are complicit in both crimes.

The mention of "terrorism" in Europe is perhaps appropriate. Among the several million Ukrainian refugees in Europe are some neo-Nazis. A considerable percentage (two-thirds by some accounts) of the volume of weaponry delivered to the corrupt government of Ukraine has been sold on the black market. Ukraine has been destroyed by the war which NATO demanded. Angry neo-Nazis who could purchase weapons from a well supplied European black market could lead to armed political violence.

Chancellor Merz’ cheerleading of the continuation of the war has coincided with a shift in Russian public opinion on most threatening nation. Germany replaced the US atop of the list.

Point 2 continued to the crux of the declaration, that the "Allies commit to invest 5% of GDP ... by 2035". As the Alexes on The Duran observed, this "commitment" is fiscally impossible. It is thus, a lie or "campaign promise". It also includes a deadline well beyond the end of political life for all of the attendant senior heads of state (US, France, Germany, UK etc.). The crux of the declaration is an advertisement draped in unachievable and optional "commitments".

Returning to poor, as in destitute, Ukraine, Proud translated the diplo-speak "sovereign" for us with:

including the word “sovereign” means that while some allies may make sovereign choices to fund Ukraine, others may choose not to.

[Ian Proud]

Thus, the "unending" has become "enduring" and the "commitment" has become optional. It would seem that the NATO non-member state of Ukraine has nothing left to give after "minerals deals" with the US and a “100 Year Partnership” with Britain. Ukraine is indeed poor, having been robbed and destroyed by NATO.

Senior statesmen or stateswomen may recall Heinz Kissinger's warning that "being an enemy of the United States can be dangerous, but being a friend is fatal!".

Point 4 included a European barb at Trump's tariffs with:

We will work to eliminate defence trade barriers among Allies ...

[NATO]

Squabbling Europeans gonna squabble, to borrow a phrase.

The sign-off, Point 5, thanked the Kingdom of the Netherlands for its hospitality.

Reality

On the fields and in the towns of the frontlines of Ukraine/Novorossiya, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation continues its inexorable advance. Dima from Military Summary has reported that, over the last week, Russia advanced in the Zaporozhye, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Lugansk, Kharkov and Sumy oblasts. Villages and fields have been captured by Russia on all fronts.

There is no sign of Russia running out of anything (weaponry, trained soldiers, morale or resolve).

Ian Proud noted that:

there has been talk of a third round of talks as early as next week.

The war will continue until the political leadership in both Ukraine and Europe recognize the disaster they have created by denying the political settlements of the unanimounsly approved UN Security Council 2015 Minsk II Accords and April 2022 Istanbul agreement between Russia and Ukraine.

Russia is in to rush.

Ukraine is destitute.

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Sources

Did Trump just dump the Ukraine War into the Europeans' lap?; Ian Proud; Responsible Statecraft; 2025-06-26

NATO's Obscene 5 Percent Pledge; Medea Benjamin; Consortium News; 2025-06-27

The Hague Summit Declaration; N/A; NATO; 2025-06-26

S&P maintains Ukraine's credit rating at selective default; N/A; Oreanda News (quoting S&P); 2025-06-04

Opening Remarks by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at Ukraine Defense Contact Group (As Delivered), Hegeseth, US Dept. of Defense, 2025-02-12

Hegseth Leaves Healey Floggin' a Dead Horse; YesXorNo; 2025-02-13

• Discusses the Hegseth and Vance double-whammy trip to Europe

Wipeout in Washington; YesXorNo; 2025-03-02

• Notes the “minerals deal” and “100 Year Partnership” scams.

NATO cringe summit; Christoforou and Mercouris; The Duran; 2025-06-26

🚨 Crazy NATO Summit: Rutte Threatens China & Russia, Militarization of Europe, Money Racket; Pascal Lottaz; Neutrality Studies; 2025-06-26

⚔️Russia Has Launched a Massive Offensive in the Zaporizhzhia Direction🚨 Military Summary 2025.06.27; Dima; Military Summary; 2025-06-27

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