Trump on rampage at Nato summit: what does it mean for Ukraine? – The Latest

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0:42Trump is still really crucial to this idea of how do you end the war? Is there a way to put pressure on Putin? We've settled a lot of wars, and this one is the one that I thought maybe would be the easiest. But Putin's a difficult character and this guy's a difficult character. There's a kind of strange paradox in the way Trump looks at allies. That kind of tension is perhaps going to come out more and more if Trump continues with this quite rogue foreign policy. From the Guardians today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hoth.

1:20A two-day summit began yesterday in Ankara in Turkey. the main event happening today with a big focus on Ukraine. Sean Walker, you are our Central and East Europe correspondent. You're based in Warsaw. You've just returned from Ukraine. I wonder if we can start there before we look at the summit itself and why the stakes are so high. I mean, there's some reporting in our paper that things are the worst they've been in some time. Well, I think certainly for residents of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, Things are the worst that they've been for a while in terms of those incoming long range missile and drone strikes that we see from Russia.

2:03There was a long time in the war where, you know, obviously everything was going on at the front. But if you lived in the center of Kiev, you'd more or less feel that Ukrainian air defense would take care of you. As Ukraine's getting shorter and shorter on air defense, that equation has changed. Russia is kind of really, really pushing because the front lines are kind of more or less static. So the war has taken to the skies. Ukraine is sending its long range drones towards Russia and Russia is smashing up Ukrainian cities. So it was really quite brutal in Kiev last week. Thousands of people in the metro, lots of people who haven't been concerned up to now, very, really quite concerned in the capital.

2:47You've also written about how crucial drone warfare has become in terms of some successes from the Ukrainian side against Russia. And that is something that Vladimir Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, is really pushing for as he attends this two day summit in Ankara, isn't it? Well, yeah, that's right. I mean, Ukraine has achieved some really remarkable attacks on Russia, particularly on the oil infrastructure. I mean, just this week, Ukrainian drones hit a refinery in Omsk, which is further away from Kiev than London is. It's way, way, way into Russia. So that's kind of causing a bit of disquiet in Russia, causing stress and anger over lack of petrol.

3:32And I think the hope in Kiev is that by really putting that economic pressure on Russia and bringing the war to Russia, that it kind of pushes Moscow into getting serious about talks, which we haven't really seen yet. Yeah, and obviously crucial to all of this is the ever unreliable Donald Trump who landed in Ankara yesterday with a vast delegation of 1400 people. I was quite interested in the detail that some of that number are there to collect his toilet waste and take it off site so it can't be analysed for intelligence on the state of his health, which is protocol that I didn't know about and definitely a job that I do not ever want to have.

4:16how would you describe the state of relations between Zelensky and Trump at the moment because it is an ever fluctuating one but he will be hoping won't he to have support from NATO allies on this drone deal in particular. Yeah I was also surprised by that detail and it's something we used to write about with Vladimir Putin there's a guy who literally carries a suitcase around that kind of follows Putin on his trips but I thought that was more like a paranoid Kremlin situation rather than generally a part of like a world leader's retinue. Crikey. Yeah, I think on Trump, I mean, it's really interesting because in many ways, Kiev's actually less dependent on the US than it has been at any time in the war.

4:58Obviously, the US doesn't send military aid anymore. Europe has stepped up with, you know, Viktor Orban's been kicked out of office in Hungary. Europe stepped up with a huge financial aid for Kiev. so in some ways uh that gives the ukrainians um a little bit more leeway they're you know developing their own drones and so on uh but of course trump is still really crucial uh to this idea of how do you end the war and is there a way to put pressure on putin you know ukraine had a really grim winter last year they really don't want to be fighting for another winter if there is any way not to. And so I think that kind of trying to get Trump back in the in the frame of mind that, you know, you can't just end this war by ordering Ukraine to give up Donbass, you have to put some pressure on both sides.

5:49And I think that's where certainly Western leaders and Zelensky will want to see if there's any change in Trump, or if we're just sort of back to, you know, I've had a great call with Putin, and like Zelensky shouldn't have got into this war, which is what we've heard from him in the past. But it's really interesting what you were just saying there about Europe and sort of how the dynamics of this NATO summit are different to previous ones in that given that Orbán has left power and the European Union was able to agree that whopping 90 billion loan to Ukraine that has sort of transformed much of its efforts on the battlefield that Europe is pretty solid, united and resolute, and Trump is arriving in the face of that unity.

6:35The dynamics are really different to previous NATO summits. Would you agree? Yeah, I think what we've been seeing since Trump comes back 18 months ago is these sort of two tracks, two schools of thought. One is we have to be, the Americans have so much we can't do without them. We have to be as nice as possible to Trump. Because even if we get a little bit from Trump, that's better than breaking this alliance. And, you know, you still see that with Mark Rutter, with the Secretary General of NATO, the way he's really been sort of almost sucking up to Trump. There was one diplomat who said to me, you know, it's cringe, but we don't mind as long as it delivers Trump.

7:13But obviously there is this question of does it deliver Trump or is, you know, does Trump just sort of pocket the compliments and carry on on his own Trumpian way, which seems to be mostly the dynamics. So I think there's this kind of second school of thought, which is that, you know, OK, we shouldn't try to blow this up like we should we should try and calm things down where possible. But we have to assume that the US under Trump and maybe under whoever follows Trump is no longer the big strategic ally, the big partner. and we have to try and get ready for some kind of reality where maybe once there's a ceasefire in Ukraine, Putin launches an attack on NATO and the US isn't there.

7:58And I think more and more people are talking about that, but still quite scared of it. And it's still a process because, you know, just to reiterate, I mean, the US military side in NATO, not to mention the intelligence gathering and so on. I mean, it is irreplaceable in the short term and a lot of people are cognizant of that. Yeah. And of course, it's something that Donald Trump himself has talked about for many, many years about wanting in his time in office, about wanting other NATO allies to increase their defence spending. It does sound like he's arrived in Anchor in a bit of a grump about that.

8:31He has been talking about Greenland again, which is something we haven't spoken about for a long time, saying he still wants to get his hands on it. He's talked about cutting trade with Spain, who he says are hopeless, bad people. The UK and Italy are also in the doghouse. So is that about defence spending again or about this sort of general bad vibes, given that Europe did not step up to support him in his war with Iran and have got this increasingly hard line on Ukraine? Yeah, I mean, the Iran situation clearly has irritated Trump a lot. I mean, again, perhaps surprising for some allies. You saw Mark Rutter today really kind of supporting Trump on Iran, saying it was essentially a great thing to launch that military action.

9:17I mean, to me, it feels like the kind of heart of this is there's a kind of strange paradox in the way Trump looks at allies, because on the one hand, they're saying, look, we're not the we're not the global hegemon anymore that's going to come in and sort things out for you. you have to pay your own way, you have to be more independent. But at the same time, when the US acts unilaterally on something like Iran, without even consulting its allies, and Europe says, well, actually, you know, we don't like this, we're not going to facilitate this, they get very offended and upset. So I think that that kind of tension is perhaps going to come out more and more if Trump continues with with sort of this quite rogue foreign policy.

10:01Yeah, well, it sounds like it's going to be a testy second day of this summit. Sean, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for having me. That's it for today. My huge thanks again to Sean Walker, the Guardian Central and Eastern Europe correspondent. You can keep up with his brilliant reporting over at theguardian.com, as well as live coverage of the NATO summit. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest. Today in Focus will be back in your feed tomorrow morning. As usual, The Latest will be back tomorrow night. This episode was presented by me, Lucy Hoff. It was produced by Sam Gruet and Leo Schick.

10:33The senior producer was Ryan Ramgobin.

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