President Trump arrived in Ankara on Tuesday for a two-day NATO summit that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called "probably the most important meeting in NATO's history," landing in Turkey shortly before 7 a.m. Eastern time to press the 32-country alliance to accelerate a 5 percent defense-spending target and to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines over a widening air-defense crisis.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan briefly greeted the president on arrival at roughly 2 p.m. local time. Three questions overhang the meeting: whether Trump can compress the 2035 timetable European allies agreed to at last year's Hague summit for lifting military spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product; whether NATO can deliver the U.S.-made Patriot interceptors Kyiv says it needs after last week's back-to-back Russian barrages killed more than 50 civilians and exposed a widening interceptor shortfall; and whether an alliance the president has, in the CBS News account, "at times questioned the usefulness and viability of" can absorb his opening moves without visible fracture.
What Trump is asking
Allies signed on to the 5 percent target at last year's summit in The Hague, up from a 2 percent floor most had struggled to meet, but they gave themselves until 2035. Trump wants the clock moved up. U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker told reporters on a preview call Sunday that "Poland, the Nordic countries, the Baltic countries lead the way, and Germany is on track for the 5%, reaching it in 2029, but many others are lagging behind, and President Trump expects all allies to step up immediately, and not only get on a sustainable path to the 5% but get to 5% as soon as possible." The United States itself currently spends roughly 3 percent of GDP on defense.
The demand is paired with a slow American retreat from Europe. The Pentagon has announced plans to withdraw about 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany and to cut fighter jets, tanks and other equipment on the continent. "Our goal continues to be shifting the burden of the conventional defense of Europe to our European allies and Canada," Whitaker said, telling CNBC that any uncomfortable moments in Ankara would be "growing pains." Earlier this year, the president threatened to "cut off all trade" with Spain after Madrid opted out of the 5 percent commitment.
Zelenskyy's ask
Zelenskyy is expected to meet Trump on the sidelines after a week that laid bare Kyiv's air-defense shortfall. Two Russian missile-and-drone barrages in the past six days have killed more than 50 civilians in the Ukrainian capital, the BBC reported, and on Monday Ukraine's air force said it did not intercept a single one of the ballistic missiles Moscow fired. Patriot interceptors, the only system in Ukraine's arsenal that can reliably knock down high-speed warheads, are in short supply worldwide.
"It is simply absurd that, in today's world, production has still not been scaled up to the level actually required to protect people from ballistic terror," Zelenskyy said in a Monday video address. He has asked European allies to hand over their own Patriot stockpiles, arguing they are useless in storage while Russian ballistic missiles kill civilians. "Russia is placing its bets on ballistic weapons, and those who want peace must place their bets on protection against ballistic attacks," he said.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who met Trump at the White House last month to prepare the summit, has urged member states to "pull their weight" and see that Ukraine gets what it needs "to defend its sovereignty." Rutte has argued that Kyiv is "changing the dynamic on the battlefield," pointing to a Ukrainian long-range drone campaign that struck an oil refinery in Omsk, Siberia — 2,500 kilometers from the Ukrainian border — and has caused fuel rationing across parts of Russia. Overnight into Tuesday, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said Russian defenses intercepted "most" of the 430 drones Ukraine sent toward the capital.
The counterpoint
Not every ally sees the president's arrival as constructive. European officials heading into Ankara have watched Trump revive a public feud with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — he posted an image of the two on Sunday captioned "RESTRAINING ORDER NEEDED" — keep alive his push to acquire Greenland from NATO member Denmark, and, in a 90-minute call last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin, offer to help end the war in Ukraine before speaking with Kyiv. Zelenskyy, on the eve of the meeting, voiced hope that the gathering would not be "empty." Behind the burden-shifting message, several European capitals arrive skeptical that the alliance's biggest member is negotiating on their side of the table.
What to watch
Trump is scheduled to hold private sessions with allied leaders Tuesday and Wednesday, with the Zelenskyy meeting expected on the sidelines. Also on the agenda: the security of the Strait of Hormuz, where U.S.-Iran talks are paused for the multi-day funeral of the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and Chinese naval activity after Beijing test-launched a submarine-fired ballistic missile into the South Pacific on Monday. In the Oval Office that day, Trump said the U.S. will win its war with Iran "one way or the other."