The event is expected to have a decreased focus on Ukraine support compared to previous years
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte delivers opening remarks as he sits beside US President Donald Trump at the NATO Summit in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 25, 2025. © Global Look Press / Keystone Press Agency / Sean Kilpatrick
NATO leaders have convened for a two-day summit in the Hague. The agenda of the US-led gathering is expected to revolve around the stand-off between Israel and Iran, Tehran’s nuclear program, the Ukraine conflict, and an increase in member states’ defense spending.
The summit is the first one to be attended by US President Donald Trump since he returned to office in January. The US leader has for years been pushing the bloc’s members to ramp up their defense spending to as much as 5% of national GDP, while complaining that America is carrying the main burden.
While Ukraine’s conflict with Russia is still expected to be on the summit agenda, multiple media reports have claimed that attention given to it would be drastically reduced compared to previous years. Trump has repeatedly clashed with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky in public while being reluctant to commit new US aid to Kiev.
Trump signaled he would “probably” meet Zelensky – who was invited to an informal dinner – on the sidelines of the summit. A Washington Post report claimed that NATO officials are trying to keep the two leaders apart as much as possible in public while being mindful of “Trump’s occasionally volcanic disdain for the Ukrainian leader.”
The Israel-Iran conflict is expected to loom large on the agenda following US strikes on Tehran’s nuclear facilities and the announcement of a ceasefire between West Jerusalem and Tehran. While Trump has claimed that Iran’s nuclear sites have been “completely obliterated,” several US media outlets reported that Washington’s airstrikes caused only limited and reversible damage.
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25 June 2025
15:44 GMT
Donald Trump has said that he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the Ukraine conflict and “get it ended.”
“You know, we had little rough times sometimes. He couldn’t have been nicer. I think he’d like to see an end to this,” he told reporters.
“I’m going to speak to Vladimir Putin, see if we can get it ended.”
- 15:39 GMT
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was “very affectionate,” Donald Trump said when asked to comment on the former Dutch prime minister calling him “daddy.”
“He likes me, I think he likes me. If he doesn’t, I’ll let you know. I’ll come back and hit him hard, okay?” the US president said.
“He did it very affectionately. Daddy, you’re my daddy.”
Mark Rutte called Trump "Daddy"You can't make this stuff up pic.twitter.com/84H8pCltum
— Caleb Bobrycki (@BobTheBaptist) June 25, 2025
- 15:08 GMT
President Donald Trump has doubled down on comparing the US airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear sites to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“In a certain way, it was so devastating… if you look at Hiroshima, if you look at Nagasaki, you know, that ended a war, too,” he told reporters in the Hague. “This ended a war in a different way, but it was so devastating.”
- 14:54 GMT
US President Donald Trump has suggested renaming America’s secretary of defense the secretary of war. “It used to be called Secretary of War,” he has told journalists at the NATO summit in The Hague. “Then we became politically correct, and they called it Secretary of Defense.” The US could adopt the new name in a couple of weeks “because we feel like warriors.”
- 14:41 GMT
A conflict between Israel and Iran could be restarted “soon,” US President Donald Trump has told journalists at the NATO summit in The Hague. Both sides are currently “exhausted” by the hostilities, the president stated. “Can it start again? I guess, someday it can. It could maybe start soon,” he added.
- 14:26 GMT
Columnist, talk show host and regular RT contributor Rachel Marsden has laid into NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s fawning private correspondence with President Donald Trump, which the latter recently made public.
“Hard to believe this guy was once the prime minister of the Netherlands, ‘Oh President Trump, way to stick it to Europe, man, what a wonderful thing you’ve just done to make Europe subsidize the American military industrial complex to tune of 5% of their GDP’,” she told RT.
- 14:07 GMT
While NATO touted the new 5% GDP defense spending target, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez publicly broke ranks, insisting that its current expenditure of 2% is “sufficient, realistic and compatible with the welfare state.”
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez speaks during a press conference after the plenary session at the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, June 25, 2025. © AP Photo / Markus Schreiber
- 13:59 GMT
Trump and Zelensky have wrapped up a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit, several Ukrainian media outlets have reported, adding that talks lasted just under an hour.
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NATO members’ leaders snubbing Zelensky at key summit – OrbanNeither of the leaders have spoken to the press since the encounter.
- 13:56 GMT
NATO has released a brief five-paragraph-long communique, stating that the bloc’s members “commit to invest 5% of GDP annually on core defense requirements” while reaffirming support for Ukraine.
Ukraine, however, was only mentioned in one sentence, while the document said nothing regarding the prospect of Kiev’s membership in the bloc. - 13:32 GMT
Earlier in the day, speaking next to Trump, Rutte defended the US leader’s use of profanities to denounce reports of the violations of the ceasefire between Israel and Iran, stating that “Daddy sometimes has to use strong language.”
'Sometimes daddy has to use strong language.'Nato's secretary general Mark Rutte referred to US President Donald Trump as 'daddy' when discussing the Israel-Iran conflict at the summit in The Hague. pic.twitter.com/Ep6GhQ63HX
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) June 25, 2025
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