REPORT: Ankara, Backstage of a NATO Summit Where Europe Bets Its Military Credibility

Introduction: the smell of gunpowder in the diplomatic salons

A Turkish capital under extreme security pressure

In ten days, the heads of state and government of the 32 NATO member nations will converge on Ankara for what promises to be one of the most loaded summits in the Alliance's recent history. On July 7 and 8, 2026, the Beştepe Presidential Complex will become the stage of a carefully orchestrated spectacle: billions of dollars in arms contracts, firm commitments on defence spending, and a collective declaration of support for Ukraine that Vladimir Putin is expected to read as a warning. Ankara is already in bunker mode: no drone may fly over the capital without official authorization from June 28 through July 10, and demonstrations have been banned for thirteen consecutive days.

This is the 36th NATO summit and the second time that Turkey has hosted the Alliance — the first time being Istanbul in 2004. But the geopolitical context of 2026 bears no resemblance to the post-Cold War optimism of that early millennium moment. We are now at the heart of a Europe in accelerated rearmament, a war that has been grinding on Ukrainian soil for more than four years, and a Donald Trump who has transformed the transatlantic relationship into a permanent negotiation between mutually suspicious partners.

What this summit reveals about the state of the Alliance

This summit reveals a NATO in profound mutation. For the first time since the Cold War, European allies appear ready to assume a substantial share of the burden of their own defence. The commitment made at The Hague in 2025 to reach 5% of GDP in defence spending by 2035 has changed the mental framework of chancelleries. It is no longer a distant, rhetorical target — it is an accounting commitment that finance ministers must budget for and that national parliaments must vote into law.

But the enthusiasm of the numbers conceals complex structural realities. Arms production lines do not get built overnight. National defence industries remain largely fragmented. And the war in Ukraine continues to demand immediate deliveries that European factories still struggle to fulfil at the pace required by Kyiv.

The grand spectacle of contracts: billions in search of credibility

Rutte's promise: "tens of billions" in new contracts

Secretary General Mark Rutte did not hide his enthusiasm. During his speech at the Atlantic Council in Washington on June 25, 2026, he announced that the Ankara summit would be the venue for the signing of "tens of billions of dollars" in new defence contracts. "We will announce tens of billions of dollars in new contracts," he declared, adding that the first day of the summit would be devoted to a "big defence industry day" featuring MoUs, letters of intent, and firm contracts.

Delegations are crunching the numbers. According to diplomatic sources and draft declaration texts currently under negotiation, new European investments will be concentrated in three strategic areas: deep strike capabilities, air defence, and autonomous systems — in other words, drones. These priorities reflect lessons drawn from four years of war in Ukraine, where long-range artillery, surface-to-air missile batteries, and drones have redefined the nature of modern conflict.

What "tens of billions" really means

The formulation chosen by Rutte is deliberately vague. It could mean 20 billion just as easily as it could mean 90 billion. Diplomats attending the preparatory consultations speak instead of reformatted contracts — existing programmes rebranded for the occasion — to which a minority of genuinely new commitments are added. Rutte's objective is to produce a strong signal to the defence industry: member governments are serious and durable customers.

The NATO Innovation Fund has just provided a concrete illustration of this dynamic by co-investing in a funding round of €500 million for STARK, a European manufacturer of autonomous systems, alongside Sequoia Capital and Founders Fund. Industrialists such as Rheinmetall, KNDS, Leonardo, and Thales are under pressure to sign multi-year production commitments that will give concrete substance to the announcements made at the Ankara summit.

Support for Ukraine: €70 billion and a Zelensky in person

A military package with complex political foundations

The centrepiece of the summit, in political terms, will be the military support package for Ukraine. According to diplomatic sources cited by Politico, the final declaration is expected to formalize a commitment of €70 billion in military aid to Kyiv, with an equivalent promise for the following year. President Volodymyr Zelensky will be present in person — Rutte confirmed this explicitly: "President Zelensky will join us in Ankara." His physical presence is a political signal as much as a diplomatic act.

But the devil is in the details. This figure of €70 billion is not entirely new: approximately €30 billion will come from the European Union's loan programme to Ukraine already approved at €90 billion, and the remaining €40 billion will depend on voluntary bilateral commitments from member states. The United States is not participating in this target. Slovakia under Robert Fico has already announced that it will refuse to contribute. These cracks in the facade of unity are precisely what the backstage of a summit reveals to the patient columnist.

Ukraine and the question of NATO membership

Behind the €70 billion figure, the real Ukrainian question remains open: will Kyiv obtain at this summit a realistic membership timeline for NATO? Preparatory signals indicate it will not. The Alliance remains divided on this point, with several members fearing direct escalation with Russia. What Zelensky will obtain, however, is a reaffirmation of Article 5 — the mutual defence clause — and commitments to deliver concrete weapons systems.

The PURL programme (Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List), through which Ukraine receives 90% of its air defences, including Patriot interceptors, will also be reinforced. This mechanism, launched by Trump and Rutte in July 2025, allows non-American allies to finance equipment from American stocks for direct delivery to Kyiv. It is the kind of pragmatic mechanism that survives political turbulence.

The number that hides everything: 5% of GDP by 2035

A historic commitment enshrined at The Hague

At the The Hague summit in 2025, NATO allies agreed to raise their defence spending to 5% of GDP by 2035 — a decision described as "historic" by Rutte. The formula operates in two tiers: at least 3.5% of GDP for strictly military spending, and up to 1.5% additional for adjacent domains such as cyber defence and critical infrastructure. By comparison, only three allies were reaching the 2% target at the time of the Wales summit in 2014. In 2025, all 32 members were exceeding it.

The 2025 record is impressive on paper: European allies and Canada increased their baseline military spending by more than $90 billion in real terms, a rise of nearly 20% in a single year. Over the decade 2016–2026, European and Canadian allies spent $1.2 trillion in additional defence funding. Germany is now on a trajectory to double its defence investments by 2029, reaching more than €150 billion per year.

The diverging national trajectories

Poland, the Alliance's champion in military spending at 4.3% of GDP in 2026, is showing the way. The Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania — are also close to the 3.5% target. At the other extreme, Spain negotiated a partial exemption, committing to reach only 2.1% instead of the core-defence 3.5%. The United Kingdom, in the middle of a political transition, is slow to publish its Defence Investment Plan — a matter of explicit concern to former Secretary General Rasmussen.

These diverging trajectories are precisely the kind of tensions that the Ankara summit will need to manage behind the scenes. Rutte wants to display a "credible trajectory" toward the 5%. But credible to whom? For an American ambassador reading the spending plans submitted by capitals, the distance between promises and voted budgets remains considerable in several member countries.

The "defence industrial revolution": between ambition and bottlenecks

The promise of mass production in Europe

The watchword of Rutte for this summit is clear: moving from the production of unique, costly weapons systems to "accelerated and mass production." The contracts to be signed in Ankara are meant to demonstrate that NATO can effectively convert its economic weight into deployable military capabilities. The Secretary General speaks of a "defence industrial revolution" that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs across Alliance member countries.

Concretely, the transition being targeted is spectacular. European defence industries were producing before 2022 quantities adapted to peacetime: a few hundred shells per month, dozens of armoured vehicles per year. The war in Ukraine revealed that these rhythms were absurdly insufficient in the face of a high-intensity conflict. Rheinmetall alone has multiplied its 155mm shell production capacity by five since the beginning of the conflict, but the road toward a European war-production capability sufficient to sustain a prolonged conflict remains long.

The concrete initiatives that precede Ankara

Several encouraging signals precede the summit. Romania and the United States have launched a joint production line for PAC-3 interceptors. The NATO Innovation Fund invested in a €500 million round for STARK, a combat drone manufacturer. Germany cancelled its F126 frigate programme in favour of MEKO A-200 frigates from ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems — a pragmatic choice that prioritizes rapid delivery over technological ambition.

These decisions show a new maturity in European acquisition choices: less national industrial ego, more operational realism. But they also reveal the limits of the transition. A Germany that cancels a sophisticated frigate programme to buy more standard vessels is a country implicitly acknowledging that it lost time on over-ambitious projects — at the expense of delivering capabilities its sailors need now.

Europe's Achilles heel: national industrial fragmentation

Thirty-two national industries that still do not speak to each other

The structural fragility of European NATO, which delegates at Ankara know but prefer not to shout too loudly, is the fragmentation of national defence industries. Rutte himself admitted it in his speech at the Atlantic Council: it is necessary to "overcome fragmented national defence industries" on this side of the Atlantic. This is not a minor technical reform — it is a change of industrial and political culture that touches on national interests deeply rooted in decades of protectionism.

The numbers illustrate the scale of the challenge. In Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom, the top ten contractors account for between 67% and 90% of the total value of defence contracts. Duplications are rife: Europe has several tank programmes, several frigate programmes, several combat aircraft programmes — often mutually incompatible. The NUPI (Norwegian Institute of International Affairs) recently summarized the situation bluntly: "Europe's Achilles heel is no longer financial, it is institutional."

The absence of interoperability as a strategic vulnerability

The lack of interoperability between European weapons systems is not merely a management problem: it is a real operational vulnerability. If a French frigate must operate with a German or Polish squadron, the communication, navigation, and weapons systems must be compatible. This is often not the case with European national equipment. NATO imposes minimum interoperability standards, but actual standards diverge considerably from one country to another.

The United States largely solved this problem by being the primary supplier to its allies — the F-35, Patriot missiles, and Bradley vehicles create de facto interoperability among allied forces. But as Europe develops its own systems for reasons of strategic autonomy, the risk of fragmentation grows. The challenge at Ankara is precisely to fund common European systems rather than diverging national preferences.

FCAS: the symbolic shipwreck of Franco-German cooperation

One hundred billion euros and nine years of work reduced to nothing

The most emblematic industrial catastrophe of European fragmentation rang out like a cannon shot just weeks before the summit: on June 8, 2026, France and Germany officially buried the FCAS programme (Future Combat Air System), the Franco-German-Spanish sixth-generation fighter that was meant to define European air power for the second half of the 21st century. Nine years of work. More than €100 billion in planned programme cost. Reduced to nothing by industrial and political conflicts between Dassault Aviation and Airbus Defence and Space.

The decision by Chancellor Friedrich Merz to end the programme for Germany in February 2026, followed by Eric Trappier, CEO of Dassault, severing all negotiations with Airbus DS in April, illustrates with painful clarity what industrial fragmentation means in practice. Meanwhile, the GCAP programme (the Japanese-British-Italian sixth-generation fighter) continues to advance. Continental Europe lost a decade and hundreds of billions on the altar of national industrial rivalry.

What remains after the death of FCAS?

The abandonment of FCAS has opened a frantic race to define the next step in European combat aviation. A particularly interesting proposal is emerging: sharing the GCAP Anglo-Japanese engine to power a distinct Franco-Spanish-German aircraft. This would be a partial, pragmatic cooperation — less glorious than the original project but perhaps more realistic. Germany, according to specialist reports, is also considering the acquisition of approximately 400 autonomous combat aircraft (CCA) to bridge the gap while a long-term solution is sought.

This post-FCAS debate illustrates the permanent tension between ambition and realism that each delegation brings in its luggage to Ankara. Industrialists dream of sovereign programmes worth 100 billion. Chiefs of staff request operational capabilities by 2030. Finance ministers look at both with equal exasperation. And in the meantime, Russian combat aircraft are bombing Ukrainian cities.

The backstage atmosphere: between facade euphoria and genuine worry

The signals delegations are sending between the lines

In the corridors and preparatory meetings that precede every major summit, diplomats speak differently from what they will say in front of the cameras. In Ankara, the atmosphere described by participants in the preliminary consultations is marked by a tension between the euphoria of numbers — the $1.2 trillion over ten years, the $90 billion additional in 2025, the tens of billions in contracts to come — and a quiet anxiety about the real industrial viability of all of it.

The NATO ambassadors negotiating the final declaration know that their heads of state will sign commitments that have no force of law in their respective parliaments. The decisions of a NATO summit produce powerful political signals, not legally binding contracts. That is the difference between promising and delivering — and this difference is the silent obsession of every delegation preparing its head of state to face the journalists after the signing.

The pressure on Rutte to produce something concrete

Secretary General Rutte is himself aware of this risk. His pre-summit communication is entirely oriented toward demonstrating that "this summit is about delivery," not new promises. He repeats incessantly that 2025 saw a 20% increase in European spending — proof that the Hague commitments are not wishful thinking. But he also knows that Putin will read the technical annexes, not the press releases. What counts for deterrence is what comes out of factories and enters arsenals.

The tension between the tempo of political communication and the tempo of industrial reality is palpable in all the preparatory consultations. Analysts from ICDS (the International Centre for Defence and Security) point out that Europe suffers from a "persistent coordination problem" — illustrated notably by Franco-German disagreements over the use of the €90 billion loan to Ukraine, with some wanting to finance European industry, others preferring to purchase already-available American capabilities.

Trump at Ankara: the unpredictable partner at the centre of everything

Washington as the independent variable in the NATO equation

The great unknown of the summit is, of course, Donald Trump. The 47th American president will be present in Ankara, and his presence cuts both ways. On one hand, it validates NATO and its commitments — an American president who boycotted the Alliance's summit would send a catastrophic signal to Moscow. On the other, European allies know that Trump can at any moment produce a declaration, a tariff threat, or a demand that eclipses all the carefully prepared announcements.

The meeting between Rutte and Trump on June 25 at the White House had precisely the purpose of calibrating the level of American engagement. Rutte made his message to Putin public through a revealing formulation: "He is not afraid of our commitments — he is afraid that we will implement them. And that is exactly what we are doing, Vladimir." This is also an indirect message to Trump: the Europeans have become reliable, and America no longer needs to carry the burden of collective defence alone.

Trump and the language of industrial profit

Rutte plays Trump with a skill that few of his predecessors possessed. He speaks to him in terms of jobs, contracts signed with American industrialists, billions flowing back into defence factories in the United States. American contributions to NATO common funds — 14.9% of the total budget, equal to Germany's — can no longer be brandished as the sole financial argument. But defence contracts signed with American companies at Ankara offer Trump an economic narrative he can sell to his electorate.

American law also bars a formal withdrawal of the United States from NATO without two-thirds approval from the Senate. But even without formal withdrawal, the Trump administration can condition American financial contributions to common funds on compliance with spending targets — a threat that Hegseth has made explicit. It is this invisible stick that the delegates at Ankara permanently bear in mind as they negotiate their spending plans.

Ukraine in the declaration: the word "threat" attached to Russia

The qualification of Moscow as a "long-term threat"

One detail of the declaration under preparation deserves to be underscored: according to diplomatic sources, the text will qualify Russia as a "long-term threat" to the Alliance. This is not a banal formulation. It inscribes NATO's defence posture in a structural and durable perspective, not a conjunctural one. It commits allies to thinking about their rearmament not as a temporary response to the war in Ukraine, but as a permanent strategic reconfiguration of their relationship to collective security.

For Ukraine, this qualification has existential importance: it means that NATO will not be able to, without contradicting itself, return to a posture of disengagement if the war were to end in a ceasefire agreement. Support for Kyiv — notably through the PURL programme, via which Ukraine receives 90% of its air defences, including Patriot interceptors — should continue to be funded by European allies even without direct American participation.

Article 5 reaffirmed despite the pressures

The Ankara declaration will also explicitly reaffirm Article 5 — the mutual defence clause. This may appear a formality, but in the current context where Trump has on several occasions cast doubt on the automatic American commitment in the event of an attack on an ally that is not spending enough on defence, this formal reaffirmation carries real political weight. The Baltic states, which share a border with Russia or Belarus, are particularly attentive to this signal.

The declaration is also expected to contain a firm commitment to maintain support for Kyiv — formulated in a way that leaves no room for interpretation. The negotiating ambassadors have learned from the The Hague declaration that ambiguous formulations generate parasitic controversies. The objective is a text that holds up to a simultaneous reading in Washington, Berlin, Paris, and Warsaw — which is, in practice, a diplomatic achievement of the first magnitude.

The paradox of Turkey as host: Erdoğan between two fires

Ankara as host city of an Alliance it has sometimes troubled

There is something profoundly paradoxical about seeing Erdoğan's Turkey host this summit. Ankara long played the role of NATO's troublemaker: it blocked the accession of Sweden and Finland for months, maintained commercial relations with Russia during the war in Ukraine, purchased Russian S-400 systems despite the Alliance's protests. Turkey used its NATO membership as a negotiating lever in dozens of bilateral files with its partners.

And yet, Turkey remains an indispensable member of the Alliance: its armed forces are the second largest in size within NATO, its Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits control access to the Black Sea, and its defence industry — notably ASELSAN, specifically cited by Rutte in his speech — produces systems that have proved their effectiveness, including the Bayraktar TB2 drones that transformed the dynamics of the Ukrainian conflict.

Ankara as a symbol of a pragmatic rather than ideological Alliance

Hosting the summit in Ankara paradoxically sends a message of strength: NATO is robust enough to include a complex Turkey without losing its coherence. Erdoğan needs the Alliance for his security in the face of Russia and regional instability in the Middle East. NATO needs Turkey to control the Bosphorus and maintain a significant military presence in South-Eastern Europe. It is a relationship of converging interests — not shared ideals.

This productive tension is at the heart of what NATO has genuinely been since its founding: not a club of virtuous democracies, but a coalition of strategic interests converging around a common threat. In 2026, that common threat is called Moscow, and it is sufficiently evident that even the most ambivalent members remain in the room.

Internal dissents: when Slovakia says no

Fico and the internal fractures that threaten cohesion

Slovakia under Prime Minister Robert Fico is the most visible example of the internal dissent that could mar the consensus at Ankara. Fico publicly announced that his country will not contribute to the €70 billion package for Ukraine. He declared that he would follow the summit preparations "with great concern." This position isolates Bratislava within the Alliance, but it illustrates a deeper unease: several governments in Central Europe have electorates who are little inclined to fund indefinitely a war whose outcome remains uncertain.

The non-legally-binding nature of summit decisions creates precisely this space for dissent. The €40 billion in bilateral contributions that complement the €30 billion from the EU-Ukraine loan programme ultimately depend on national parliamentary votes that have not yet taken place. The Ankara declaration will be strong in symbolism. Delivering the funds will be another story, written in the months and years that follow.

Hungary, Slovakia, and the Eurosceptic bloc

Slovakia is not alone in its ambivalence. Orbán's Hungary maintains its special relationship with Moscow while remaining a formal NATO member. These minority but persistent positions represent a real vulnerability for the coherence of the Alliance. They give Putin diplomatic entry points — countries he can try to influence, divide, and reassure separately in order to weaken the united Western front.

Rutte's strategy in the face of this challenge is to produce economic faits accomplis: contracts signed, effective deliveries, deployed military capabilities. The more allies are integrated into common programmes of production and acquisition, the more politically costly it will be for a Fico or an Orbán to obstruct the collective commitment. This is the logic of "defence industry" as an instrument of political cohesion.

The Ukraine programme: air defence, deep strike, drones

The priority capabilities that will make the difference on the ground

Beyond the numbers, what captures the attention of military delegations at Ankara is the concrete nature of the capabilities that NATO will commit to delivering or financing for Ukraine. Three domains dominate the discussions: air defence, with additional interceptors for the Patriot batteries that Ukraine desperately needs; deep strike systems, to enable Kyiv to hit military targets on Russian territory well beyond the front line; and drones and autonomous systems, which represent the new doctrine of the modern battlefield.

The PURL programme has demonstrated its effectiveness: through this mechanism, European allies finance the acquisition of American equipment for direct delivery to Kyiv. It is an elegant arrangement that bypasses administrative rigidities and differences in national acquisition procedures. It also allows non-American allies to contribute financially without the United States having to bear alone the political burden of each delivery.

The logic of support beyond a ceasefire

One of the discreet but crucial debates at Ankara concerns the continuity of support for Ukraine beyond a possible ceasefire. Several delegations are pushing for the final declaration to include long-term security commitments that bind allies to Kyiv even in the absence of active combat. These would be bilateral guarantees similar to those granted to Israel — not formal accession to NATO, but substantial protection.

This discussion is made urgent by the conviction of analysts that Russia will use any ceasefire to rearm and relaunch the offensive within two to five years. If NATO and its members want to deter this scenario, they must signal now that support for Ukraine is structural and not circumstantial. That is the entire stake of the "long-term threat" formulation in the final declaration.

The message sent to Moscow: Rutte speaks directly to Putin

An Alliance learning the language of direct deterrence

Rutte's speech at the Atlantic Council had something unusual for a NATO Secretary General: he was addressing Vladimir Putin directly by his first name. "He is not afraid of our commitments. He is afraid that we will implement them. And that is exactly what we are doing, Vladimir." This frontal rhetorical posture represents a significant shift in tone. NATO is no longer merely communicating to its own members — it is now speaking directly to the Kremlin.

For Putin, the numbers from the Ankara summit are indeed a cause for concern. A Europe that spends $1.2 trillion in additional defence funds over ten years, that signs contracts in the tens of billions, and that commits to supporting Ukraine to the tune of €70 billion per year represents a military-industrial power that the Russian war economy cannot durably compete with. Moscow's strategy rests on the conviction that Western democracies will tire and reduce their support. Every summit that delivers more infirms this conviction.

Deterrence as a cumulative message

Deterrence does not function through a single spectacular declaration. It accumulates over months and years — each contract signed, each weapons system delivered, each budget increase contributes to signalling to Moscow that the cost of further escalation is prohibitive. The Ankara summit will not deter Putin by itself. But it inscribes itself in a sequence — Cardiff, Warsaw, The Hague, Ankara — which, read in its entirety, tells the Kremlin that the West has changed paradigm.

This paradigm shift is perhaps the most important achievement of the post-2022 era. Western democracies have demonstrated — imperfectly, slowly, with contradictions — that they are capable of sustaining a prolonged defence effort in the face of a persistent threat. This is the fundamental message that Rutte wants to engrave in the marble of Ankara, and it is the message that Putin fears most: not the number of interceptors delivered today, but the capacity for sustained delivery over time.

Conclusion: collective defence put to the test of reality

Between the euphoria of numbers and the test of delivery

The Ankara summit of July 7 and 8, 2026 will be, on paper, a diplomatic success. The tens of billions in contracts, the €70 billion in support for Ukraine, the presence of Zelensky, the qualification of Russia as a "long-term threat", and the presence of Trump beneath the ceilings of the Beştepe Complex — all of this will produce powerful images, resonant declarations, and material for years of geopolitical commentary. The "defence industrial revolution" spoken of by Rutte will be proclaimed with emphasis.

What the years that follow will say about this summit

But history will judge this summit solely on what is delivered. On the Patriot interceptors that do or do not reach Ukrainian batteries before the next winter. On the 155mm shell production lines that do or do not run at full capacity by 2027. On the capacity of European defence industries to overcome their national fragmentation and produce interoperable systems in sufficient quantity. And on the willingness of national parliaments — in Berlin, in Paris, in Rome, in Madrid — to vote the budgets that will give reality to the commitments made beneath the chandeliers of Ankara. NATO has never lived up to its declared ambitions as quickly as it announced them. But it has never had so many means to honour them. That may be the true lesson of this summit.

Signed Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency box

Who I am and my acknowledged biases

I am a columnist and analyst specializing in international security, foreign policy, and military strategy. I have no privileged access to the delegations present in Ankara and I am not on the ground — my reporting draws on open sources, official statements, diplomatic summaries, and academic and institutional analyses. My bias is acknowledged: I believe that NATO, despite its imperfections and internal contradictions, represents the most effective available framework for the collective defence of liberal democracies. I support Ukraine in its resistance to Russian aggression without reservation or ambiguity.

What I do not know and my method

I do not know the exact content of the closed-door negotiations between NATO ambassadors. I do not know whether the contract amounts mentioned by Rutte include reformatted agreements or whether they are primarily new commitments. I do not know whether Trump will sign the final declaration without introducing last-minute amendments. These uncertainties are constitutive of pre-summit reporting. My method: cross-referencing official statements (NATO.int, Atlantic Council), diplomatic analyses (Politico, Ukrainska Pravda, Conference Board), economic data (SIPRI, NUPI), and industrial reports (DW, PhilStockWorld, FCAS coverage) to construct a coherent and honest picture of what is being prepared in Ankara.

Sources

Primary sources

NATO.int — Rutte's speech at the Atlantic Council, Washington, June 25, 2026

NATO.int — Rutte meets Trump in Washington, June 25, 2026

Straits Times / Reuters — Rutte announces tens of billions in contracts, June 26, 2026

Ukrainska Pravda — NATO members pledge billions for Ukraine at Ankara, June 25, 2026

Secondary sources

Anadolu Ajansı — NATO by the numbers ahead of the Ankara summit, June 25, 2026

Conference Board — Policy analysis: toward the Ankara summit, June 25, 2026

Simon Gros — NATO 3.0 and the rebalancing of transatlantic defence, June 21, 2026

DW — Europe is spending billions to rearm, so why the delays?, June 23, 2026

PhilStockWorld — What the failure of FCAS means for European defence, June 19, 2026

Fakti.bg — NATO: contracts worth tens of billions at the Ankara summit, June 26, 2026

Banking News — The €70 billion trap for Ukraine and internal European divisions, June 25, 2026