# COMMENTARY: Ankara, the summit where NATO promised more than it can deliver

> On July 8, 2026, NATO leaders gathered at the presidential complex of Beştepe, in Ankara, for what Turkey wanted to present as a display of renewed strength.

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Commentary
- Published: 2026-07-20
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/commentary-ankara-the-summit-where-nato-promised-more-than-it-can-deliver

## Key takeaways

- The final declaration committed allies to 140 billion euros for Ukraine across 2026 and 2027, but the column argues about 90 billion comes from a frozen-assets loan and about 48 billion from renewed bilateral pledges, leaving roughly 2 billion in new money.
- Trump said Ukraine would get a license to build Patriots, yet the companies had not been informed, and production of the interceptor could take up to 24 months or more.
- Trump announced lifting CAATSA sanctions on Turkey, but the 2020 NDAA bars F-35 transfers while Turkey holds the S-400, and Trump avoided committing to a sale.
- The day after the summit, a Russian strike on Kyiv killed 31 people, which the column links to depleted Patriot stocks.
- The column praises smaller, faster bilateral aid such as German drone co-production and Lithuania's 0.25 percent of GDP pledge.

## Introduction: one ballroom, two storylines

### A summit meant to reassure, not alarm

On **July 8, 2026**, **NATO** leaders gathered at the presidential complex of **Beştepe**, in **Ankara**, for what **Turkey** wanted to present as a display of renewed strength. Two days of summitry, a defense industry forum, a final declaration padded with big numbers, and at the center of it all, a question that refused to disappear beneath the ceremonial speeches: will **Ukraine** make it through next winter with what it has just been promised. **Secretary General Mark Rutte** had promised "tens of billions of dollars" in new contracts, and the final declaration ultimately announced more than **50 billion dollars** in new military purchases along with a collective pledge of at least **70 billion euros** for aid to **Kyiv** in 2026, renewed for 2027, according to **Forbes**.

But a summit is not judged by its communiqués, it is judged by what remains once the music stops and the **ministers** go home. Barely 24 hours after the closing session, a **barrage of Russian ballistic missiles and drones** struck **Kyiv** and killed **31 people**, the deadliest attack of the year on the Ukrainian capital, precisely because Ukraine's **Patriot** interceptor stockpiles had run dry, according to analysis from **Defence Ukraine**. That contrast, between the billions announced and the lives lost the next day, sums up what this summit actually delivered better than any speech could.

### What the staging could not hide

The choice of venue itself was not incidental. By holding this summit in **Ankara**, **NATO** handed **Recep Tayyip Erdoğan** a prime diplomatic showcase, at a moment when **Turkey** was actively seeking a way out of its exclusion from the **F-35** program. President **Donald Trump**, who arrived for the occasion, spent a good part of his public appearances responding to critics who called him a "paper tiger" on the Atlantic stage, in the words reported directly by the **Los Angeles Times**.

*A summit staged in Ankara to flatter Erdoğan and reassure Trump about the Alliance's vigor looks, first and foremost, like an image exercise rather than a concrete act of solidarity with Kyiv. That needed to be said from the opening bell, before even getting into the numbers that would follow.*

This tension between the projected image and the reality of deliveries became the defining signature of this summit. **Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky** arrived in **Ankara** asking for one precise and urgent thing: manufacturing licenses for **Patriot** systems, just as his air defenses had been tested by a strike of **68 missiles and more than 350 drones** on **Kyiv** only days earlier. This summit was not born of a theoretical planning exercise; it grew out of an operational emergency being lived in real time by a country under bombardment.

*A NATO summit that closes with the deadliest 31 deaths of the year in Kyiv, twenty-four hours after the family photo, is not a tragic coincidence we can wave away. It is proof that announcements and deliveries currently live on two completely different calendars, and that the gap between them is paid for in human lives.*

## The Patriot promise: what Trump actually told Zelensky

### "We're going to let you make Patriots"

The most discussed moment of the summit remains **Donald Trump's** statement during his bilateral meeting with **Volodymyr Zelensky** on July 8. "We're going to give you a license to build **Patriots**. That's pretty cool. That way you can't say we're not giving you enough," the American president said, quoted by several outlets present on the ground, including the **New York Times**. The almost casual phrasing clashed with the gravity of the Ukrainian request.

What **Trump** himself admitted, with striking candor, was that his administration had not yet informed the companies involved, **Lockheed Martin** and **RTX**, of this decision. In other words, the promise was made in front of the cameras before it was even communicated to the industrial players who would have to carry it out. That detail alone should have tempered the euphoria that followed the announcement in some Ukrainian and Western circles.

### A year, maybe more, before the first unit rolls off the line

**Zelensky** himself tempered the surrounding enthusiasm, noting at a press briefing that Ukrainian production of interceptors could take "a year or more" to become operational. That timeline is not a rhetorical hedge, it reflects a documented industrial reality: according to **Serhii Beskrestnov**, an adviser to Ukraine's Ministry of Defense, manufacturing a **PAC-3 MSE** interceptor takes up to **24 months** under optimal conditions, and the solid-fuel rocket motor, a critical component, requires roughly **30 months** because of global supply chain constraints.

In practical terms, this means significant production volumes are not expected before **2027, or even 2028**. Between the spectacular announcement in **Ankara** and the first battery actually built on Ukrainian soil lies an ocean of industrial delays that neither diplomacy nor political will can close by decree.

*I want to believe in this license, because it represents exactly the kind of strategic autonomy Ukraine has demanded since day one of the invasion. But believing in a promise and believing it will change anything this winter are two different things, and I refuse to confuse legitimate hope with a timeline that does not yet exist.*

## The 70 billion euros: fresh money or recycled money

### A spectacular figure, a far more modest architecture

The final declaration from **Ankara** commits 31 allies to **140 billion euros** in support for **Ukraine** across 2026 and 2027, with a baseline of **70 billion euros** per year in equipment, assistance and military training. On paper, that is a considerable sum, far larger than anything announced at previous **NATO** summits.

But a closer look at this financial architecture reveals a far less spectacular reality. Roughly **90 billion euros** come from the pre-existing European loan backed by frozen Russian assets, of which only a fraction is allocated to 2026 defense purchases. Roughly another **48 billion euros** correspond to the renewal of bilateral commitments already announced by European countries and **Canada**. That leaves, according to that same analysis, roughly **2 billion euros** of genuinely new capital generated by the Ankara negotiations themselves.

### The United States, absent from the formula

Another element deserves equal candor: the **United States** is structurally excluded from this annual 70-billion-euro funding formula, which rests exclusively on the 31 European nations and **Canada**. This exclusion formalizes what the **Trump** administration has been demanding for months: a transfer of the financial burden to European partners, while **Washington** retains control over the most strategic decisions, such as the **Patriot** licenses.

This imbalance between who pays and who decides quietly sketches the new hierarchy of the **Atlantic Alliance** for the post-2026 era: a Europe ordered to massively finance the war effort, without necessarily gaining an equivalent say over the most sensitive technological decisions that determine **Ukraine's** survival.

*Calling this "140 billion euros of new support" is a feat of communications spin that even the Kremlin's best publicists might envy. It must be said plainly: the generosity of this figure rests on accounting recycling, and Ukraine cannot heat its homes this winter with billions that already existed before the cameras in Ankara switched on.*

## Turkey, the summit's biggest diplomatic winner

### Erdoğan gets what he's wanted for six years

While media attention focused on **Ukraine**, **Turkey** quietly secured the summit's most tangible diplomatic gain. **Trump** announced he would lift the **CAATSA** sanctions imposed on the Turkish defense agency since **December 2020**, after **Ankara's** purchase of the Russian **S-400** system. "We're going to lift the sanctions," **Trump** said, seated beside **Erdoğan** in the presidential palace.

This announcement ends, or at least begins to end, six years of **Turkey's** exclusion from the **F-35** program, a status imposed after the country's expulsion from the program in **July 2019**. For **Erdoğan**, wringing this gesture out of **Washington** in the middle of a Ukrainian crisis represents a political victory whose echo will extend well beyond this single summit.

### A U.S. law that presidential words alone cannot erase

But between the announcement and the actual delivery of **F-35** fighters lies a legal obstacle that **Trump** himself was careful not to cross publicly. The **National Defense Authorization Act of 2020** explicitly bars the transfer of **F-35s** to **Turkey** as long as it still "possesses" the **S-400** system, with no presidential waiver written into the law to get around that prohibition. On the specific question of selling **F-35s**, **Trump** chose his words with care: "That's a decision we'll make," he said, adding that he would "consider" the option, never using the verbs approve, sell or deliver.

That choice of vocabulary was no rhetorical accident. It captures exactly the gulf, coming out of the **Ankara** summit, between the energy of political announcements and the slowness of the legal and industrial machinery that alone can turn a promise into an actual delivery.

*Erdoğan is right to celebrate, because he got in one sentence what six years of quiet diplomacy had failed to unlock. But I note, with the same rigor, that American law on F-35s does not dissolve with a handshake in front of the cameras, and that nuance deserves repeating every time someone celebrates a victory too soon, before it is actually secured.*

## Rutte facing the charge that his own summit fell short

### "Money well spent," really

**NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte** insistently defended the summit's reach, calling European defense investments "staggering spending" and "money well spent." That insistence, almost defensive in tone, betrayed a very real concern: convincing **Trump**, sitting in the room, that **Europe** was finally carrying its share of the Alliance's financial burden.

The gap between that assertive messaging and the actual content of the announcements was noted by several observers on site. According to the **Los Angeles Times**, while **Rutte** had promised "tens of billions of dollars in new contracts" in the days before the summit, the final event produced no precise figures for a good portion of the projects announced, including some deals that had already been struck long before but were simply re-presented in front of the cameras.

### A defense industry under pressure to deliver

The **NATO defense industry forum**, held on July 7 on the sidelines of the summit, did manage to sign concrete contracts worth more than **50 billion dollars**, including the purchase of ten **GlobalEye** surveillance aircraft from Swedish manufacturer **Saab** for five billion dollars, along with the acquisition of **Triton** maritime surveillance drones from **Northrop Grumman** worth roughly **2.7 billion dollars**. **NATO** also launched its **Drone Edge** initiative, backed by more than **40 billion dollars** over five years to develop counter-drone capabilities.

These contracts exist, they are documented, and they represent a real industrial effort. But their volume, however impressive, remains distinct from what worried Ukrainians in **Ankara** most: the immediate availability of interceptors to protect civilians this winter, not surveillance drones that will not arrive for years.

*Mark Rutte has a difficult job, holding together an alliance of thirty-two countries with often contradictory priorities, and I do not fault him for putting all his communications energy into it. But his role, precisely because it is so exposed, should never consist of dressing up a recycled figure as a resounding victory in front of Ukrainian families who, for their part, are counting the interceptors left in their shelters.*

## Kyiv struck while leaders were at dinner

### July 9, the year's deadliest attack

The day after the summit closed, on **July 9, 2026**, a combined barrage of Russian ballistic missiles and drones struck **Kyiv**, killing **31 people**, the deadliest attack on the Ukrainian capital since the start of the year. That timing is probably not a coincidence: **Moscow** chose to strike at the precise moment global diplomatic attention was already drifting away from **Ankara**.

The day before the summit, on July 6, **Russia** had already demonstrated that **Ukraine** could not intercept **29 ballistic and hypersonic missiles**, precisely because Ukrainian stocks of **PAC-3** interceptors had run dry. This sequence of strikes, before and after the summit, illustrates a brutal reality: while diplomats were negotiating manufacturing licenses valid for 2027 or 2028, Ukraine's air defenses were already living, in real time, the shortage those licenses are supposed to fix one day.

### Zelensky announces a dedicated long-range strike command

Facing this continuous pressure, **Volodymyr Zelensky** announced the creation of a dedicated long-range strike command, "effectively global," against **Russia**, with a mandate to focus "100 percent of available resources" on degrading Russia's war-making potential. This announcement, made shortly after the deadly strike on **Kyiv**, reflects a Ukrainian doctrine that now refuses to confine itself to a strictly defensive posture.

This strategic shift fits directly into the logic of the **Ankara** summit: since Western deliveries of interceptors remain slow and uncertain, **Ukraine** is choosing to strike Russia's capacity to produce and move the weapons that threaten it, rather than settle for waiting on a defense that will not arrive in time.

*Thirty-one dead in one night, the day after a summit meant to demonstrate the West's strength, should haunt every leader who shook hands in front of the cameras in Ankara. You cannot celebrate a declaration of solidarity on a Tuesday and leave an allied capital without interceptors the following Wednesday; that is not diplomacy, it is a calendar of abandonment.*

## Russian refineries, Kyiv's target of choice

### Syzran hit for the third time this year

On the night of **July 11 to 12, 2026**, Ukrainian armed forces struck the **Syzran** refinery, in the **Samara** region, along with ten oil tankers, four storage tanks and other Russian military targets, according to the general staff of Ukraine's armed forces. It was the third documented strike on this facility in 2026, a rhythm that reflects a deliberate Ukrainian strategy of sustained harassment against Russia's oil sector.

This refinery had already been struck once before, on **May 21, 2026**, halting its operations according to two industry sources cited by **Reuters**. The regional governor reported two deaths at the time. The fact that **Kyiv** keeps returning to strike the same target three times within a few months shows the objective is not symbolic, but economic and cumulative.

### A Don-Azov canal also targeted

The same night of July 11 to 12, an oil tanker was also hit in the **Don-Azov** canal, extending the range of Ukrainian strikes beyond land facilities alone to include the maritime logistics routes **Russia** uses to export its oil. This diversification of targets illustrates a growing sophistication in Ukraine's long-range strike doctrine, now capable of simultaneously threatening the production, storage and transport of Russian hydrocarbons.

By targeting a land-based refinery and a maritime supply route in the same stroke, **Ukraine** demonstrates its ability to strike the entire Russian oil chain, from production to transport, rather than limiting itself to a single link in that economic chain. This systemic approach is what makes the Ukrainian strategy particularly difficult for Russian air defenses to counter.

*Every refinery that goes up in flames in Russia means a little less fuel for the tanks advancing on Pokrovsk or Kostiantynivka, and a little less hard currency to pay North Korean mercenaries. This is not vengeance, it is a perfectly logical arithmetic of war, and it is time to call it that without false modesty.*

## The eastern front did not wait for the summit to end

### 268 clashes in a single day

While the cameras filmed handshakes in **Ankara**, the Ukrainian front kept living its brutal, unrelenting daily reality. On July 9, 2026, the **Institute for the Study of War** logged **268 clashes** along the front line, with particularly intense fighting around **Pokrovsk** and **Kostiantynivka**, two towns that have concentrated most of the Russian offensive pressure in the **Donbas** for months.

That figure, abstract as it may seem, reflects a precise tactical reality: **Russia** takes no pause in its offensive, regardless of the Western diplomatic calendar. The fighting in **Pokrovsk** and **Kostiantynivka** continues on its own tempo, indifferent to summits, final declarations and photo sessions among allied leaders.

### A war of attrition that waits for no one

This continuity of fighting, documented daily by the **ISW**, is a reminder of a truth that major international summits sometimes tend to obscure: the war in **Ukraine** never stops to make room for diplomacy. It continues in parallel, with its own toll of human and material losses, while delegations debate production licenses that will only bear fruit years from now.

It is this dual timeline, the summits that wrap up in 48 hours and the front that never pauses, that makes the balance sheet of **Ankara** so hard to celebrate without reservation. The Ukrainian soldiers fighting in **Pokrovsk** on July 9 did not have the luxury of waiting for **Patriot** licenses to become operational before they kept fighting.

*You can applaud a summit for two days, but the front never takes a day off. We have to be honest enough to say that while licenses were being negotiated in Ankara, soldiers were dying in Pokrovsk at the same pace as before, almost as if the two worlds no longer existed in the same place.*

## China, Iran and North Korea, absent guests looming over everything

### A threat that shapes the whole summit without ever being named

While the **Ankara** summit officially centered on **Ukraine** and **Turkey**, the shadow of **China**, **Iran** and **North Korea** hung over every strategic discussion. The ongoing conflict in the **Middle East** involving **Iran** directly weighed on **Trump's** agenda during his second day in **Ankara**, according to correspondents on the ground, who noted that the American president ran through meetings on **Iran** before even meeting with **Zelensky**.

This juxtaposition is not incidental. It shows just how much the Western security architecture must now manage several crisis flashpoints at once, each fueled by regimes that, in their own way, are testing the limits of Western resolve: **Russia** in Eastern **Europe**, **Iran** in the **Middle East**, and **North Korea**, which continues supplying munitions and, according to several Western analyses, troops to **Putin's** regime.

### China, the silent arbiter of global balance

**China**, for its part, took part in no session of the summit, but its strategic shadow stretches over every Western decision regarding **Ukraine**. Beijing remains **Moscow's** chief economic partner, buying the oil that Western sanctions are trying to restrict, and watches closely how durably the **Atlantic Alliance** can sustain a partner under prolonged pressure.

Every Western hesitation on arms deliveries, every delay in implementing a promise like the **Patriot** licenses, sends a signal that **Beijing** coldly factors into its own strategic calculations, particularly regarding **Taiwan**. It is this global dimension, often underestimated in coverage centered on **Europe**, that gives the **Ankara** summit a reach far beyond the Ukrainian theater alone.

*Every time the West is slow to deliver what it promises Ukraine, someone in Beijing takes notes on what that means for Taiwan. This war is never just a European affair, it is a public test of the entire free world's credibility in the face of those who dream of watching it hesitate.*

## Zelensky, between public gratitude and tactical clarity

### A speech blending thanks and continued pressure

Speaking before **NATO** leaders, **Volodymyr Zelensky** delivered a speech mixing sincere gratitude with deliberate strategic pressure. He noted that **Ukraine** had intercepted "all six Kalibr missiles" and "31 of the 33 cruise missiles" launched by **Russia** in a recent strike, while stressing that the real challenge remained defense against ballistic missiles, for lack of enough **Patriot** interceptors.

This precise, numbers-driven rhetoric contrasts with the sometimes vaguer language used by other delegations. **Zelensky** chose to demonstrate, with verifiable figures, that Ukraine's problem is not a lack of competence among its air defense crews, but a glaring shortage of Western munitions matched to the Russian ballistic threat.

### A NATO membership bid still in limbo

Zelensky also renewed his call for accelerated Ukrainian membership in **NATO**, arguing that Ukraine's armed forces, hardened by more than four years of actual war, would strengthen the Alliance's defensive capabilities rather than weaken them. Despite this argument, **NATO** formally extended no invitation to **Ukraine** at this summit, settling instead for reaffirming an already familiar statement of principled support.

This caution from the **Alliance** on the membership question, maintained summit after summit for years, illustrates the structural limit of Western solidarity with **Kyiv**: allies are willing to fund, equip, and promise industrial licenses, but remain notably more reluctant to formally bring **Ukraine** inside the most protective legal framework that exists, Article 5.

*Zelensky has been asking for years for the same thing, a seat at the table rather than a chair in the hallway, and every summit answers with the same embarrassed politeness. One can understand the nuclear deterrence calculations behind this caution, but it must also be acknowledged that it leaves Ukraine alone carrying the weight of a war the entire continent dreads seeing spread further.*

## Germany, an example of concrete bilateral commitment

### A drone co-production deal signed in Ankara

Far from the grand collective declarations, some bilateral commitments made on the summit's sidelines showed a more tangible form of effectiveness. **Germany** and **Ukraine** signed a co-production agreement in **Ankara** for long-range attack drones, under which Ukrainian drones will be manufactured in **Germany** and then delivered to **Ukraine**.

This type of agreement, less spectacular than a presidential promise on **Patriots**, nonetheless offers the advantage of faster implementation, since it relies on drone technology already mastered and proven by Ukraine's own industry, rather than on a complex American system requiring years of technology transfer.

### The coalition of 100 interceptors, an instructive precedent

Another concrete example directly precedes the **Ankara** summit: the coalition formed on June 11, 2026, by **Germany**, **Denmark**, the **Netherlands** and **Norway**, which committed to delivering around a hundred **Patriot** interceptors to **Ukraine**, with **32 interceptors** already transferred and 68 more to follow according to announcements made at the time.

This precedent demonstrates that a bilateral commitment, more modest in scale but faster in execution, can sometimes produce a more immediate operational effect than a spectacular presidential promise whose implementation remains suspended in technical negotiations that have not even started yet. It is a lesson that Ukraine's allies should reflect on before their next summit.

*I will always prefer thirty-two interceptors delivered quietly to a hundred promised with fanfare in front of the cameras. German and Scandinavian discretion on this file is worth more, in my eyes, than all the thundering declarations of Ankara combined.*

## The Trump paradox: geopolitical ally, domestic reckoning

### A stabilizing role for the West against Moscow and Beijing

It must be acknowledged with the rigor that analysis demands, even when it disturbs certain partisan reflexes: on the geopolitical level, **Donald Trump** played a role in **Ankara** that, despite his often blunt manner, kept the **West** engaged against **Russia**. His **Patriot** license promise, however imperfect and slow to materialize, represents a real strategic gesture toward **Ukraine**, at a moment when other voices in his own political camp argue for complete disengagement.

This geopolitical dimension of **Trump** in **Ankara** deserves to be clearly separated from his domestic American record, which remains subject to independent, fact-based criticism. On the international stage against **Putin**, **Beijing** and **Tehran**, an American presence, even a transactional and sometimes chaotic one, remains preferable to a strategic vacuum that these regimes would exploit without hesitation.

### A transactional method that worries European allies

This transactional approach, summed up in his own line about Ukrainian **Patriots**, "that way you can't say we're not giving you enough," reveals a diplomacy that treats military support as a transaction to be settled rather than a matter of principled commitment. This method worries several European capitals, which fear that American loyalty to **Kyiv** remains hostage to shifting domestic political calculations.

It is precisely this structural uncertainty that has been pushing **Europe**, for several months now, to accelerate the build-out of its own air defense production capacity, independent of the American electoral calendar. The **Ankara** summit, in that sense, also served as one more wake-up call for European capitals.

*Trump remains, in my view, a necessary but never comfortable ally for the West against Russia and China, and I refuse to choose between acknowledging that and criticizing him on other fronts. One can welcome the Patriot license promised to Kyiv while still refusing to look away from the transactional, almost mercantile, manner in which that promise was made in front of the cameras.*

## What the next summit must deliver, or else it will have failed

### Turning licenses into factories, not just communiqués

The real test of the **Ankara** summit will not play out in the coming weeks, but in the coming months, when Ukrainian and American technical teams begin, or fail to begin, concretely negotiating the terms of the promised **Patriot** license. On July 9, Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defense began these technical discussions, according to **Defence Ukraine**, but no binding timeline has yet been set.

This implementation delay is the real stake of the coming allied summits. If, a year from now, technical negotiations still have not produced a signed agreement with **Lockheed Martin** and **RTX**, then the **Ankara** promise will join the long list of spectacular announcements never followed by results, a list **Ukraine** unfortunately knows all too well since 2022.

### The anti-ballistic coalition must prove itself before winter

At the 35th Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting, on June 18, 2026, **Zelensky** had already warned that the anti-ballistic coalition needed to "demonstrate its full capacity and deliver real results" before the winter of 2026-2027. That warning remains more relevant than ever after **Ankara**, since it is immediate operational capacity, not long-term industrial promises, that will determine whether **Kyiv** can protect its population during the next wave of Russian winter strikes.

It is this concrete, measurable and near-term deadline that should now serve as the yardstick for judging the real value of the **Ankara** summit, far more than the impressive but largely recycled figures in the final declaration.

*I will judge this summit not by what was said in Ankara, but by what will have been delivered before the first freeze of next winter. Words protect no one from a ballistic missile; only actually deployed Patriot batteries can, and that is the only measure that should count.*

## Canada and Norway, the quiet workhorses of the collective effort

### Ottawa and Oslo, less spectacular but kept promises

In the shadow of the big American and Turkish announcements, several mid-sized countries presented more modest commitments in Ankara that are also easier to verify in the months that follow. Canada unveiled a new aid program worth roughly 900 million dollars for Ukraine, while Norway confirmed a contribution of more than 306 million dollars specifically dedicated to Ukrainian air defense. Denmark, for its part, had already announced a new military aid package of 672 million dollars in late June, delivered just before the summit rather than during it, a scheduling choice that limits the announcement effect but guarantees a clearer traceability of the commitment.

This type of contribution, repeated by several Scandinavian and North American countries, does not make headlines the way the presidential promise on **Patriot** licenses does, but it forms the real connective tissue of Western aid to Ukraine. Unlike the large multilateral announcements whose financial detail stays vague, these bilateral contributions are generally disbursed within short, verifiable timeframes.

### Lithuania sets a notable budgetary precedent

Lithuania, for its part, announced it would dedicate at least **0.25 percent** of its gross domestic product to military aid for Ukraine, a quantified and proportional commitment that stands in sharp contrast to the vague phrasing of certain major powers. For a country the size of Lithuania, that percentage represents a considerable budgetary effort relative to its population and economy.

This type of commitment, made by Baltic states directly exposed to the Russian threat, illustrates a fundamental difference in perception within the Alliance: for countries that share a border or a recent history of occupation with Russia, supporting Ukraine is not a question of abstract solidarity, but a matter of direct strategic survival. This difference in perceived urgency explains why some small countries deliver proportionally more than certain major Western powers.

*Lithuania and Norway deserve louder applause than the United States on this particular file, because they are the ones delivering without demanding headlines in return. Real Western solidarity is often measured in the least-discussed budget lines, not in presidential declarations filmed before the world's cameras.*

## Conclusion: the clear-eyed fatigue of an ally counting the days

### A summit that reassured without resolving

The **Ankara** summit will be remembered as the moment **NATO** formally promised **Ukraine** production autonomy, while revealing, in the same breath, how far away that autonomy remains in time. The **70 billion euros** a year, the lifting of Turkish sanctions, the **Patriot** license, each of these elements is a real, documented, verifiable gesture. But none of them changes the reality lived by the residents of **Kyiv**, who buried their dead on July 9, nor that of the soldiers fighting in **Pokrovsk** while delegations dined in **Beştepe**.

It is this irreducible tension between the time of diplomacy and the time of war that defines, more than anything else, the real balance sheet of this summit. The allies took a real step, but one that always arrives a little too slowly for those living under the bombs while waiting for Western and Ukrainian factories to finally run at full capacity.

### The only question that matters now

One simple, almost brutal question remains: can the **West** turn, within a few months, a promised license into interceptors actually produced, before **Russia** finds a way to exploit every day of Western delay. The answer to that question will determine whether the **Ankara** summit is remembered as a genuine turning point, or as one more entry in the long list of gatherings where much was promised and, in the end, little was delivered, too late.

**Ukraine**, for its part, does not have the luxury of waiting for the answer in the comfort of an academic exercise. It will live it, as it has since 2022, through air raid sirens, death tolls and daily military bulletins, while the Western world keeps debating the pace at which it should honor its own commitments.

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [The Kyiv Independent — Zelensky lands in Turkey for NATO summit, July 7, 2026](https://kyivindependent.com/zelensky-lands-in-turkey-for-nato-summit/)

- [Defence Ukraine — What the Ankara summit actually committed to, July 10, 2026](https://www.defenceukraine.com/en/insights/ankara-nato-summit-outcomes-2026/)

- [RBC-Ukraine — Ukraine strikes Russia's Syzran oil refinery, July 12, 2026](https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/ukraine-strikes-russia-s-syzran-oil-refinery-1783844293.html)

- [Defence Ukraine — Before Ankara, the NATO summit's test for Ukraine, June 30, 2026](https://www.defenceukraine.com/en/insights/pre-ankara-nato-summit-2026/)

### Secondary sources

- [Forbes — What happened at the 2026 NATO summit, July 9, 2026](https://www.forbes.com/sites/marktemnycky/2026/07/09/what-happened-at-the-2026-nato-summit/)

- [Al Jazeera — Trump says he will lift sanctions on Turkey, July 7, 2026](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/7/trump-says-will-lift-sanctions-on-turkiye-consider-selling-f-35s)

- [Los Angeles Times — NATO unveils billions in arms deals, July 7, 2026](https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2026-07-07/nato-unveils-billions-in-arms-deals-to-prove-its-firepower-as-trump-arrives-in-ankara)

- [The New York Times — Trump takes aim at Europe at NATO summit, July 8, 2026](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/07/08/world/nato-summit-turkey-trump-ukraine)

- [Janes — Allies pledge $80 billion in aid to Ukraine, July 9, 2026](https://www.janes.com/defence-intelligence-insights/defence-news/air/nato-summit-2026-allies-pledge-usd80-billion-in-aid-to-ukraine-in-both-2026-and-2027)

- [Reuters — Russia's Syzran oil refinery halted by drone attack, May 25, 2026](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russias-syzran-oil-refinery-halted-by-may-21-drone-attack-sources-say-2026-05-25/)

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/commentary-ankara-the-summit-where-nato-promised-more-than-it-can-deliver