President Trump To Meet Both The Ukrainian And Syrian President In Ankara On 08th.

Ankara/Washington DC; July 2026: The US President Donald J Trump is set to embark on a diplomatic mission to Ankara today (Monday – 06th July 2026) for the annual NATO Summit, where he is likely to interact with key allies on 07th (Tuesday) & 08th (Wednesday).

Several key defense issues will likely be among the alliance’s discussion topics, including the war between Russia and Ukraine, the Iran conflict and Trump’s flirtation with pulling U.S. troops out of Europe. The onus will be very much on NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte to manage relations between Trump and the other member countries. Rutte has been viewed as a savvy communicator with Trump to smooth over tensions during his second term.  

However, the centre stage of the summit would be on the 08th of July – when President Trump would engage in a ONE-TO-ONE discussions with nonmembers who were invited to the summit: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

Trump have met the Ukrainian President Zelensky less than three weeks ago at a Group of Seven (G7) meeting in France. After their meeting, the US President said Russia “should make a deal” to end its war in Ukraine, citing mounting casualties. Furthermore, on the 04th of this month, both Trump and Zelensky has spoken over telephone, when Zelensky had congratulated Trump “and all Americans” on the country’s 250th birthday.

“Of course, President Trump and I discussed the current situation on the frontline as well as our diplomatic efforts”, the Ukrainian leader wrote on social platform X. “There is a real prospect to put an end to this war, and America’s resolve is decisive. We have agreed to continue these discussions during the NATO Summit in Ankara”.

Last week, the Russian military had launched strikes on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, with Zelensky saying on Thursday (02nd July) that 21 people were killed and nearly 100 more sought medical help after the attack. The drone and missile strike damaged more than 100 ordinary residential buildings.

Trump also spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone on Saturday (04th), according to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Their conversation, which lasted for 01 hour and 25 minutes, was ‘highly constructive’ and featured Trump confirming “his readiness to facilitate the earliest possible cessation of hostilities and the search for peaceful solutions to overcome the crisis”, according to Yuri Ushakov, a longtime aide to Putin.

President Trump has also praised al-Sharaa since he took over Syria after former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fled for Moscow when rebel troops entered Damascus. At the G7 meeting last month, Trump said al-Sharaa, a former al Qaeda commander, could more effectively combat Hezbollah than Israel. The Israeli military’s campaign against the Iranian-backed militant group in Lebanon has resulted in scores of killed civilians and derailed peace talks between the U.S. and Iran last month.

“He’s very good with Hezbollah, does not like them”, Trump said of al-Sharaa. “And I’ll tell you what, Israel’s been fighting Hezbollah too long and too many people are being killed”.

As reiterated in the beginning of this article, since commencing working as NATO secretary-general almost two years ago, Mark Rutte has spent much of his time trying to keep the United States anchored to the world’s biggest military alliance, employing outright flattery to dissuade US President Donald Trump from acting on threats to abandon it. But the standpoints keep shifting, raising the stakes ahead of this week’s summit in Turkey.

Initially, it was about money. Trump has long railed against NATO allies for spending too small a fraction of their national budgets on defense. But those problems were addressed at their summit last year, when US allies committed to invest as much as America, in gross domestic product terms.

NATO’s real problem now is turning that money into military capabilities, particularly as European countries worry about a possible attack from Russia. Still, Rutte tried to put an end to the escalating concerns at a White House meeting last month, with a new pitch using a chart labeled the “The Trump Trillion” in gold letters, exhibiting $1.2 trillion in spending by European allies and Canada since 2017.

But Trump appeared unmoved, saying he was still disappointed at some NATO allies’ refusal to join the Iran war, which he had launched alongside Israel without consulting them. “We don’t need their money; we don’t need anything. I just want loyalty”, Trump had said.

But during both of Trump’s terms, Rutte and his predecessor, Jens Stoltenberg, have dedicated a huge amount of energy just to keep the United States inside their alliance.

Trump has threatened to leave NATO, dallied with pulling US troops out of Europe and vowed to take over the island of Greenland, a semiautonomous part of ally Denmark. He has cast doubt over whether he would defend another member not spending enough on their military, eroding trust. Rutte’s approach has been heavy on flattery. Last month’s carefully choreographed pitch in the Oval Office — with props redolent of an American flag, laid down a new marker, even for a man heavily criticised for likening Trump to a ‘fatherly figure’.

NATO cannot function without its biggest and most powerful ally. Europe is being pushed to fend for itself even as Russia, the historical reason for the alliance, poses a greater threat. Last month, the Pentagon surprised its NATO allies by announcing that it was scaling back the number of troops, warships, aircraft and drones it would provide if one of them came under attack. Trump has also sent conflicting messages about whether US troop numbers would be lowered or increased.

This year, the summit will be hosted by Erdogan, another key NATO member with an independent streak. His close ties to Trump may keep the American president at the table, but it’s unlikely to mend the rifts. Rutte has tried to convince Trump that his European partners are spending so much more that America can safely turn its attention to security challenges posed by China while they handle the war in Ukraine. But Trump wants more now, and his demand for ‘loyalty’ is hard to capture on any chart.

Rutte’s predecessor, Stoltenberg, has written in his memoir about chairing a 2018 summit that Trump nearly upended. “If an American president says he no longer wishes to defend the other allies and leaves a NATO summit in protest, then the NATO treaty and its security guarantee aren’t worth very much”.

Team Maverick.