A NATO summit full of surprises: how Zelenskyy secured more than expected from Trump

11.07.2026, 14:52 eurointegration.com.ua

Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s trip to Ankara for the NATO summit was always going to be a successful one. The Alliance had planned to announce pre-existing decisions on funding for Ukraine’s armed forces and were just waiting for the official event to do so. The package even includes measures to integrate Ukraine further into NATO.

In addition, relations with the US president, who plays a particularly important role in NATO, have been improving recently.

But there were pleasant surprises even for those who’d anticipated that the 2026 summit would be a success. It’s safe to say that it exceeded expectations.

In terms of NATO, everything went well – just as predicted.

And in terms of the US, Ukraine received more than it could have hoped for. The meeting with Donald Trump demonstrated that the American president is increasingly leaning towards supporting Kyiv, for one simple reason: Ukraine is winning on the battlefield, and Trump likes to bet on winners.

This was evident in both the US president’s actions and his decisions, perhaps the most important of which was the political agreement to grant Ukraine a licence to manufacture interceptor missiles for Patriot systems.

Another pleasant surprise was the results of diplomacy efforts with Poland and Hungary. Zelenskyy resumed dialogue with the president of Poland and managed to get out of an artificial deadlock with Hungary. Hungarian leader Péter Magyar appears to have reconsidered his stance and abandoned the unrealistic demands that had been preventing the normalisation of relations.

However, the agreements reached in Ankara are only laying the groundwork.

The real changes are still ahead. Ukraine must make use of the opportunities that have emerged. Every point matters, from Patriots to Magyar.

Negotiations with the US president are always unpredictable to some extent. Unlike other leaders, Trump does not rely on talking points written by his advisers and diplomats, but on his personal attitude towards his counterpart and his own perception of political processes.

This perception frequently differs from the way Europeans see the world. There was no shortage of examples of this in Ankara.

The way Trump lashed out at Spain will have repercussions. His criticism did not come out of nowhere: relations between Trump’s America and Madrid have long been less than great. And Spain’s refusal to let US bombers use its air bases before heading off on combat missions to Iran put an end to any prospect of friendship between them.

But Trump’s announcement of a trade war with Spain during the NATO summit itself went beyond even the most pessimistic expectations.

It is not yet clear what this will mean in practice, but Washington is reportedly preparing to impose an embargo on Spanish goods.

An even bigger surprise was the revival of the conflict with Denmark.

On this the US president’s policy went beyond the boundaries of international law, good-neighbourly relations, allied commitments etc. long ago. But over the past six months, it had seemed that Trump’s territorial claims with respect to Denmark had been put to rest – that, in the face of resistance both internationally and within the US, Trump would no longer revert to his publicly declared intention to annex Greenland.

But the optimists turned out to be wrong.

Immediately before the NATO summit, first "sources in the White House", then Trump himself once again began declaring an intention to take Greenland away from an allied state.

Exactly what Trump hoped to achieve through this escalation is unclear. There has been no shortage of conspiracy theories about an alleged intention to derail the Alliance summit and so on, but that did not happen. The allies appear to have become accustomed to the US president’s eccentricities and the fact that at times they have to ignore completely unacceptable statements.

Another layer of absurdity was added to the situation by the fact that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said he had a "very friendly" conversation with Trump at the summit just before the US president’s outburst. He has since said he is prepared to handle Trump’s threats "patiently".

This made Trump's actions towards Ukraine stand out all the more.

If the official White House statements are to be believed, Trump held three full bilateral meetings during his two days in Ankara. The first was with the summit’s host, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Then Trump held (admittedly brief) talks with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. More time was spent on the public part of that meeting – a press conference improvised by Trump in the presence of the secretary general during which he lashed out at allies, including Spain.

His third major meeting was with Ukraine.

The Trump-Zelenskyy talks took place on Wednesday, at a time when other NATO members were still in summit meetings.

The meeting between the presidents was scheduled to last an hour – a long time for a Trump meeting. The leaders ended up talking to the media for more than 40 minutes, and after the journalists were asked to leave, they continued their discussions in private for about another hour.

The length and exclusivity of the meeting say a great deal. But there were also other signs of President Trump’s positive attitude towards Ukraine.

It’s worth mentioning one particular feature of the spontaneous press conferences that Trump holds before his international meetings. The foreign leader sits next to the US president, and if Trump wants to speak with the press, he starts to act as a moderator and personally decides which journalists get to ask questions. Representatives of the White House press pool will be there – American media figures whom Trump sees every day and often knows by name – as well as journalists from the guest’s side.

During the meeting with Zelenskyy, it was striking that Trump was keen to engage with Ukrainian journalists, because he repeatedly took questions from unfamiliar media representatives who were clearly expected to ask about Ukraine (whereas journalists from the American pool mostly asked about Iran).

Trump allowed some Ukrainian journalists to ask several questions. He even turned to the journalists and asked them what question he should ask Putin.

"Ask him when he will end this war," BBC Ukraine journalist Myroslava Petsa replied to the US president.

"That's a good question. I'll be asking that question," Trump responded.

But the main achievement of the Zelenskyy-Trump meeting was not the visible attention paid to Ukrainians and Ukrainian issues, nor Zelenskyy’s joke (brilliantly timed as it was) about why it is dangerous to visit Moscow. It was, of course, the substantive agreements reached.

The main agreement concerns US Patriot systems – Patriot interceptor missiles to be precise.

The shortage of PAC-3 anti-missile interceptors for Patriot systems, which are capable of shooting down ballistic missiles, is one of the systemic problems facing air defence, and not only Ukraine’s. The global shortage of interceptors has intensified dramatically during the Russia-Ukraine war. The capacity of Lockheed Martin’s PAC-3 production lines in the US is estimated at 600-700 units per year.

Given this persistent shortage, Kyiv long ago raised the issue of producing these missiles in Ukraine – to simplify logistics, ensure more reliable supplies, and reduce the global shortage.

For a long time Washington was categorically opposed to this. The resistance did not come from the manufacturer itself (which would also profit from Ukrainian production), but primarily from the US government’s refusal to grant a licence to export the technologies required. (Even European partners do not have localised PAC-3 production.)

It appears that in Ankara, this obstacle was finally overcome.

"One of the things I think we're going to be talking about today," Trump said, pointing at Zelenskyy, "a little birdie told me this – about the fact that we'll give them the right to make Patriots. We'll show them how to do it – it's very complex actually. But you'll figure out the complexity quickly."

"We're going to give a licence to you to make Patriots," Trump later repeated.

He also said he was confident that there would be no problem getting the manufacturer’s approval.

In his usual manner, Trump did not go into detail about exactly what he meant by "Patriots", but it would be reasonable to assume that he was referring to the interceptors rather than the systems themselves. According to European Pravda sources, Ukraine had requested PAC-3 interceptors and had received preliminary positive signals on this issue ahead of the Ankara meeting. Some Western media outlets such as the Financial Times have also reported that the discussion was specifically about these anti-ballistic missiles.

But obviously we still need to wait for an official US decision on this matter.

Launching production takes time, of course. Those missiles won’t reach Ukraine’s Armed Forces tomorrow, or even within a year.

Nevertheless, the official approval and the announcement of production lines in Ukraine will have an immediate impact. Countries supporting Ukraine that are reluctant to draw from their own missile stockpiles will gain a stronger argument for doing so. Once Ukrainian production begins, they will have greater certainty that they can replenish their inventories from the US manufacturer, which is currently focused on supplying Ukraine.

The second success of the Ankara summit concerns the Russia-Ukraine war and its conclusion.

This is less about a specific agreement and more about a change in the US’s attitude.

The clearest example was Trump’s public backing for Ukraine as regards the venue for the "peace talks" with Putin.

But an even more important indicator was Trump’s statement in support of long-range Ukrainian strikes against Russian economic targets such as oil refineries. In all previous years, Washington refused to take Ukraine’s side on this issue. At most, the US maintained neutr