Zelensky at the NATO Dinner in Ankara, but Shut Out of the Plenary Session

Introduction: a variable-geometry invitation for Kyiv

A dinner yes, a plenary no

Ahead of the NATO summit set for July 7 and 8, 2026 in Ankara, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed his attendance at the dinner hosted by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the summit's sidelines, without taking part in the official plenary session bringing together the Alliance's thirty-two heads of state and government.

This unusual arrangement, where Ukraine finds itself invited to a social moment but excluded from the summit's institutional core, illustrates the delicate diplomacyNATO must now navigate to preserve both its historic support for Kyiv and its relationship with the American administration.

What this investigation will show

This piece traces the origins of this decision, identifies who made it and why, and situates this partial exclusion within the broader context of ongoing tensions among Western allies over continued military support for Ukraine against Russia.

According to Channel News Asia and the Anadolu agency, this decision above all reflects NATO's desire to avoid any further friction with Washington, as U.S. President Donald Trump himself is set to attend this historic summit, held for only the second time by Turkey since the 2004 Istanbul summit.

The institutional backdrop of this thirty-sixth NATO summit

Ankara, the second Turkish city to host this historic gathering

The Ankara summit is the thirty-sixth summit in NATO's history and only the second hosted by Turkey, after the one held in Istanbul in 2004, a fact that gives this event particular symbolic weight for the current Turkish government.

According to Daily Sabah, hosting this summit in Ankara fits into a broader Turkish strategy aimed at asserting its central diplomatic role within the Atlantic Alliance, amid a particularly tense and complex regional geopolitical context.

An agenda dominated by defense spending

The summit's official agenda is largely dominated by the question of member countries' defense spending, with an ambitious target under discussion of reaching 5% of gross domestic product devoted to defense by 2035, according to information reported by the Anadolu agency.

This ambitious budgetary target, well above the historic goal of two percent of GDP, reflects pressure exerted for several years by the American administration for European and Canadian allies to shoulder a larger share of the financial burden of collective Western defense.

The stated reasons behind this partial sidelining

A decision confirmed by NATO's secretary general

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had already confirmed back in June, according to the Russian news agency TASS, that President Zelensky would not take part in the summit's official plenary session, a confirmation that drew mixed reactions among Western observers of the Ukrainian file.

This decision, made well ahead of the summit itself, suggests deliberate planning rather than a simple last-minute logistical hiccup, reinforcing the idea of a precise diplomatic calculation aimed at avoiding any open tension with certain key partners within the Alliance.

The explicit desire to placate Washington

According to several analyses picked up by the Straits Times, this diplomatic arrangement directly reflects NATO's desire to avoid any public confrontation with President Donald Trump's administration, whose position on the level of continued American commitment to Ukraine remains a sensitive subject within the Alliance.

This calculated diplomatic caution clearly illustrates NATO's persistent difficulty in maintaining a unified and coherent position on the Ukrainian file, while simultaneously avoiding publicly exposing internal disagreements among its members on this highly sensitive issue.

A bilateral meeting between Trump and Zelensky nonetheless planned

A one-on-one confirmed on the sidelines of the official summit

Despite his absence from the official plenary session, President Zelensky is still expected to meet directly with President Donald Trump on the summit's sidelines, according to information reported by CNBC and confirmed by the Anadolu agency, a bilateral meeting that could prove decisive for the future of American support for Kyiv.

This parallel meeting comes in a format similar to the one planned with new Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, suggesting the American president now favors direct bilateral diplomacy over the Alliance's traditional large-scale institutional multilateral gatherings.

The real stakes behind this bilateral meeting

This bilateral meeting could prove, according to several observers of the file, more decisive for the concrete future of American military support to Ukraine than the official plenary session itself, since the most significant decisions on military aid are generally negotiated in this kind of restricted format rather than during more formal protocol sessions.

This diplomatic reality highlights just how much NATO's traditional institutional formats sometimes lose relevance against the direct personal diplomacy favored by certain current Western leaders, notably the American president himself.

Erdogan's dinner, a diplomatic door that stays open

A strong symbolic gesture from Turkey

The maintained invitation to the dinner hosted by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a significant diplomatic gesture from Turkey, which has consistently maintained a distinctive and relatively balanced relationship with both Ukraine and Russia since the current conflict began.

This gesture allows Kyiv to maintain a visible diplomatic presence at the summit, even without full access to the official plenary discussions, a form of compromise that partially satisfies all parties involved in this delicate protocol negotiation.

Turkey, a constant mediator since the conflict began

Turkey has played a constant mediating role since the start of the Russian invasion, notably through the Black Sea grain deal negotiated in 2022, an accumulated diplomatic expertise that partly explains why Ankara continues to play a privileged intermediary role between the different parties to the current conflict.

This Turkish diplomatic balancing act, though occasionally criticized by some Western allies who take a firmer stance toward Moscow, paradoxically helps maintain useful communication channels that other Western countries probably could not preserve as effectively.

Ongoing tensions within the Alliance over the Ukrainian file

Diverging positions between European and American allies

This Ankara summit comes amid ongoing tensions between European allies, generally more favorable to continued and strengthened military support for Ukraine, and the current American administration, whose stance on long-term commitment remains more ambiguous and subject to frequent reversals.

This underlying divergence, far from being purely theoretical, translates concretely into protocol decisions like the one seen in Ankara, where NATO appears to prioritize preserving its internal cohesion at the expense, at least symbolically, of fully recognizing Ukraine's institutional role.

The decisive weight of the military funding question

Discussions on raising defense spending to 5% of GDP occupy such a central place at this summit that, according to several analysts cited by Forbes, they seem to partly overshadow substantive discussions on concrete and immediate military support for Ukraine against continued Russian aggression.

This internal budgetary prioritization within the Alliance, however legitimate from a long-term strategic standpoint, risks paradoxically diverting some of the diplomatic attention that should normally remain focused on the urgent and immediate needs of the current Ukrainian front.

What this arrangement reveals about Trump's diplomacy

A bilateral rather than multilateral diplomatic style

The structure of this summit, with its bilateral meetings running parallel to the official plenary session, clearly illustrates President Donald Trump's characteristic diplomatic style, which generally favors direct person-to-person negotiations over more binding institutional multilateral frameworks that are slower to produce concrete results.

This diplomatic style, though sometimes criticized for its institutional lack of predictability, also offers the potential advantage of unlocking certain concrete decisions more quickly, as shown by the bilateral meeting planned with the Ukrainian president on the sidelines of the official summit.

A military merit acknowledged despite domestic criticism

On the strictly military front and in terms of the Western posture toward Russia, President Trump's confirmed presence at this NATO summit and his willingness to meet directly with President Zelensky reflect an American commitment that, despite its apparent ambiguities, remains present and active on the Ukrainian file at this precise stage of diplomatic negotiations.

This continued presence, though imperfect and sometimes frustrating for the European allies most committed to Kyiv, is better than a complete American withdrawal from the file, a scenario several Western observers seriously feared in the months leading up to this summit.

Reactions within Ukrainian civil society

Understandable frustration over this partial exclusion

Several Ukrainian commentators and analysts have expressed understandable frustration over this partial exclusion of their president from the official plenary session, seeing it as a potentially troubling signal about the real place granted to Ukraine within NATO's institutional structures at this critical moment in the conflict.

This frustration, though largely understandable given the context of an existential war for Ukraine's national survival, must nonetheless be weighed against the maintained bilateral meeting with the American president, which retains real strategic value despite its less formal nature.

Western popular support that remains largely intact

Despite the protocol-level diplomatic tensions seen in Ankara, popular support for Ukraine remains largely intact in most NATO member countries, an important political factor that continues to weigh on the decisions of Western governments despite the protocol hesitations observed at this particular summit.

This steady popular support serves as a significant political counterweight to institutional diplomatic hesitations, reminding Western leaders that public opinion remains largely favorable to continued support for Kyiv, regardless of the protocol calculations seen at this specific summit.

Conclusion: a diplomacy of compromise with uncertain outcomes

What to take away from this Ankara summit

The NATO summit in Ankara perfectly illustrates the current diplomatic complexity surrounding the Ukrainian file: a maintained invitation to the protocol dinner, exclusion from the official plenary session, but a significant bilateral meeting preserved with the American president on the sidelines of the main event.

This nuanced arrangement above all reflects NATO's desire to preserve its internal cohesion amid ongoing tensions among its members, while simultaneously avoiding fully abandoning Ukraine at this particularly delicate diplomatic moment for the conflict's future.

A test to watch in the coming days

The concrete results of the bilateral meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, planned on the sidelines of this summit, will likely determine the immediate future of Western support for Ukraine far more than the official protocol discussions of the plenary session itself.

The outcome of this Ankara summit, caught between cautious diplomatic symbolism and very real military stakes, deserves to be closely followed by all observers watching the future of Western support against continued Russian aggression in Ukraine.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Who I am and how I work

I am not a diplomat or an official international relations expert. This investigation relies exclusively on verifiable journalistic and institutional sources, cited below, without invention or fabricated testimony. My pro-Ukrainian and pro-Western outlook is openly stated, in keeping with this publication's editorial line.

This position does not prevent me from acknowledging the real complexity of NATO's diplomatic calculations, nor from crediting the positive aspects of current American engagement on the strictly military front, despite my broader reservations on other domestic issues.

What I don't know and the method followed

I cannot predict the precise outcome of the bilateral meeting between Trump and Zelensky, nor the concrete decisions that will result from it for future military aid to Ukraine. This piece relies on verifiable public sources, listed below, consulted and cross-checked before publication.

Sources

Primary sources

Channel News Asia, coverage of the NATO summit and support for Ukraine — July 2026

Anadolu Agency, status of allies' defense spending ahead of the Ankara summit — July 2026

Secondary sources

Straits Times, analysis of tensions within NATO ahead of the summit — July 2026

CNBC, confirmation of the Trump-Zelensky bilateral meeting — July 5, 2026

TASS, Mark Rutte's confirmation of Zelensky's exclusion from the plenary — June 17, 2026

Daily Sabah, official schedule of the historic Ankara summit — July 2026

Wikipedia, reference page on the 2026 NATO summit in Ankara — 2026