NATO Summit: Leaders will gather in Vilnius on July 11 and 12 to address a variety of concerns, including disagreements over Ukraine’s potential membership and Sweden’s accession, as well as expanded munitions supplies and defence plans
This will be the fourth NATO summit since Russia initiated its invasion of Ukraine, with the first summit taking place almost exactly one year ago on February 25, 2022, the day after Russia launched the war.
Other summits took place in Brussels and Madrid.
Protection will be tight in Vilnius, with three German Patriot air defence batteries stationed there to provide protection during the conference.
Other warplanes will also patrol the skies over Lithuania, which lies between the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and Belarus and has long been regarded as a NATO weak point on the east flank.
The debate about Ukraine’s membership in the Alliance is one of the primary topics.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has stated unequivocally that Kiev will not become a member as long as the fighting continues, and that there will be no official invitation to Ukraine at the Vilnius summit.
Increasing NATO’s eastern wing’s strength
The leaders will go over the alliance’s first defence plans since the Cold War, which explain how NATO would respond to a Russian attack.
Sweden is another topic of discussion.
NATO intends to admit Sweden as its 32nd member during the Vilnius summit, while Turkey continues to obstruct Stockholm’s entry.
NATO spending
NATO’s current military budget objective of 2% of GDP is intended to be a minimum necessity rather than a goal, according to Stoltenberg.