This year’s meeting marked a sharp departure from last year’s summit, where Ukraine’s NATO membership was on the agenda. This time, NATO members talked and committed only to increasing defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035.

NATO motivated the move as a response to what it called a “long-term threat posed by Russia to Euro-Atlantic security.”

At the same time, beyond the need to ramp up the cash robbery the recent NATO summit signaled a bleak outlook for Kiev’s hopes of sustained Western support, as the US-led alliance turned its attention toward US President Donald Trump.

During the gathering in The Hague earlier this week, the bloc’s chief, Mark Rutte, pledged continued support for what he described as Ukraine’s “irreversible path to NATO membership.” However, Kiev’s aspirations were notably absent from the final summit communiqué, which offered only a brief mention of the alliance’s “enduring sovereign commitments to provide support to Ukraine,” NYT reported Thursday.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, who was invited to the two-day summit, was “not feted as in years past,” the newspaper noted. Nor was he “the center of attention” anymore, it added. A meeting between Trump and Zelensky on the sidelines of the event also failed to produce any “specific promises,” the outlet wrote.

After the meeting, which lasted roughly 50 minutes, Trump denied that the two had discussed a potential ceasefire between Kiev and Moscow, contradicting an earlier statement by Zelensky.

On Wednesday, Rutte told reporters simply that “our aim is to keep Ukraine in the fight today.”

It has now become clear that NATO has decided to take additional steps to rob its member countries and their citizens.

Is every British family prepared to pay more for distant wars?