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# 									Transatlantic Relations and the War in Ukraine:  The Road to the Summit							

FPC Briefing

Peter Rough, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at Hudson Institute

Friday, May 17, 2024, 11:00 a.m. ET

Washington, D.C.

May 17, 2024

## 								Summary							

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Peter Roughbriefs ontransatlantic relations and the war in Ukraine in the leadup to the NATO Summit in Washington, DC.  He covers a range of topics,from where preparations stand headingtowardtheSummittothe implications of Russia’songoingwarin Ukrainefortransatlanticrelations.He will also addressthe importance of allied support for Ukraine and the role China, North Korea, and Iran have played in sustainingRussia’s war effort. 
   

**THE WASHINGTON FOREIGN PRESS CENTER, WASHINGTON, D.C.**

**MODERATOR:**  Good morning and welcome to the Washington Foreign Press Center’s briefing on Transatlantic Relations and the War in Ukraine: the Road to the Washington Summit.  My name is Zina Wolfington, and I’m the moderator today.  The briefing is on the record, and we will post a transcript of this briefing later today on fpc.state.gov.  Our briefer today is Peter Rough, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at Hudson Institute.  He is an independent subject matter expert, and the views expressed by briefers are not affiliated with the Department of State, are their own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Government.  Peter Rough will start us off with opening remarks, and after his remarks, I will open the floor for questions.

And with that, I’m going to turn it over to Senior Fellow Rough.

**MR ROUGH:**Thank you.  Thank you very much and thank you all for being here.  Hello to those of you who are joining online.  It’s a great privilege and honor to be here, and I thought I would just begin with a few opening remarks on the NATO Summit itself almost in staccato style, a few unrelated points, and then from there move to the broader geopolitical situation before turning it over to you all for questions.

So perhaps just to begin and almost to state the obvious, this will commemorate the Washington Summit to be held in July – 75 years of Alliance – and it really is an opportunity, I think, for President Biden to bask in the glow of 31 other Allies as well as many other partners who will be traveling, welcoming them to Washington, and showcasing the American multilateral alliance system in Europe.  Because of that, though, I would say that there are also a few almost downside or risks which we should pay attention to and closely observe as we report on the summit and the leadup to it and observe its proceedings.

The first is, to be sure, that this is an American summit rather than just a Biden administration undertaking.  This will take just days – just days before the Republican National Convention, and for that reason I think the Biden administration will take care to build in senior congressional representation – what I think is rather important – and it will also attempt to broaden the discussion by bringing in Republican thought leaders and others, really making this an American undertaking and effort, which is really in the spirit of what NATO summits have been in decades past.

Moreover, I think the Biden team will lean in on the subject of burden sharing.  In 2013, prior to President Putin’s first intervention – the annexation of Crimea in Ukraine – only, I think, three Allied members spent 2 percent of GDP on defense.  Of course, there’s the famous Wales Pledge from 2014 where Alliance members committed themselves to that.  And by the time of the summit, we’ll have a burden-sharing report come out in June to give us more firm sense of this.  Senior administration officials, including Julie Smith – our ambassador to NATO – on the record this week thought we would end up somewhere between 20 to 23 Allied members hitting the 2 percent mark of GDP.  So they will surely lean into this as an accomplishment and to try to address some of the criticisms that – in my view, justifiably so – have been made of Alliance members who have been laggards on defense spending.

There will also be a heavy focus on the DDA family of plans, which are already blessed in Vilnius.  These are the new battle plans to actually, if necessary, deter and then fight a war in the European theater.  And that principally, of course, is aimed at the threat posed by Russia as spelled out in the Strategic Concept adopted in Madrid the year before.

It also, I think, is an opportunity for the Alliance to think beyond Wales.  There are some concerns that Allies, so as not to embarrass Joe Biden, will come to Washington for the summit and parade 2 percent, but there will almost be accounting tricks or they will empty their coffers to hit 2 percent.  But in out years, those numbers might lag again.  So I think it’ll be important to really make clear this is a permanent commitment and then move beyond the 2 percent, because virtually everyone one speaks to in the Alliance deals with security issues.  The analytical community in Europe and the United States recognizes that 2 percent probably is no longer enough; we might need to hit 2.5 percent or more.  And the Nordics, the Eastern Europeans, the UK have made commitment to that, and they will be lauded for it at the NATO summit.

And lastly, the last sort of threat to the summit, if we can put it that starkly, is the counterprogramming that will be sure to take place in the Kremlin.  We know that Xi Jinping just had a swing through Europe.  He purposefully chose heading to France, Hungary, and Serbia as his three destinations of choice:  I think in France to accentuate strategic autonomy as a theme, something which the Chinese have been sort of in support of in recent years; in Hungary as a new economic hub, almost as a Trojan horse of sorts within the Alliance; and in Serbia, which has also made some, I think, rhetorical choices in recent years that give the Chinese hope that one can wedge the Alliance through Europe.

So those are, I think, a few areas that I would just mention – the importance of making this an American summit, the emphasis on burden sharing and actual spending, and lastly, counterprogramming – that we should be aware of.  And in the category of counterprogramming with President Putin, we already see the ongoing offensive around Kharkiv.  There could be a push there, or perhaps there’ll be a new vector opened up where they try to attack Western supply lines from the north in the coming months.

Secondly, I would say the summit is going to be dominated by the issue of Ukraine, and it’s hard to get around that topic.  It really is, I think, the crucial issue.  But the White House would like to badly avoid the public spat that we saw at Vilnius last year, and I think it will try to dampen down disagreements within the Alliance on Ukraine, principally through two means.  The first is to try to convince those Allies who are pushing for more of a forward-leaning posture on Ukraine that we need to show Alliance solidarity as to convince Vladimir Putin that we are in it for the long haul.

And then the second is they are already now lowering expectations.  We just saw Tony Blinken in Kyiv; he gave an address at a university.  And if you read between the lines, it’s rather clear that membership is not going to be in the cards for Ukraine at the summit.  We’ve heard that explicitly in background conversations with senior administration officials in recent weeks; and again on the record, one or two senior administration officials have come out pretty bluntly and said while negotiations are ongoing, there won’t be a membership offer made.

Instead, I think they will try to generate a positive headline coming out of the G7 in Italy next month on windfall profits attached to the frozen Russian funds.  And then beyond that, try to wrap their deliverables at the NATO summit as a – as a victory of sorts, as something that will constitute success.  This is being described as a bridge to NATO, and that bridge to NATO will include these bilateral security agreements that were announced by the G7 at Vilnius and that various countries are negotiating with the Ukrainians.  The administration will sell that as important; that the Americans are in the midst of those talks with the Ukrainians for the bilateral security agreement between the U.S. and Ukraine right now.

Secondly, there will probably be a separate statement in addition to the communique or declaration from the summit as part of the NATO-Ukraine Council.  It will be the first time there’s a NATO-Ukraine Council meeting at a NATO summit.  Then there will be, I think, a big focus on interoperability, which we’re already seeing.  So how can Ukraine’s military systems, assets, money floods into their defense industrial base be built up so that it’s interoperable with the West.  Right now, there’s a lot of talk of Frankenstein-style systems, because everyone is donating as part of the coalition in the Ramstein format to Ukraine what they have, and this is pushing the Ukrainians to really put together systems with various components from different legacies and different points of origin.  So how to make that more interoperable.

And last, but certainly not least, there is talk about a potential NATO mission to Ukraine, which is now being reported on also in the press.  This could be in the category, for example, of training.

And then third, I would just highlight to kind of sum up the NATO summit preview part of my remarks, the IP4, the Indo-Pacific 4, will be coming to the summit.  This will be the third summit which they will have attended – the IP4, of course, being Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.  And I think while the administration and the broader NATO-watching community believe that their simple attendance at the first two summits was enough of a deliverable, they will want to move beyond that.

And we’ve already seen, for example, ROK-Korean-Polish defense industrial base cooperation.  The Japanese were at the – at NATO in Brussels a few months ago briefing their own cyber security strategy.  There is appetite and interest in making a big deliverable with the IP4 at the NATO summit, and I suspect there will be something announced to that effect there.

So, so much for the NATO summit.  I know I’ve already gone on too long, but maybe I can make a remark or two also on the geopolitical setting as I see it.  And here I really – while I’m open to discussing anything in the Q&A, want to address to one particular facet.  And that is the broadening of the conflict, so to speak, in that there now really is an axis of revisionists forming in Eurasia around this war.  The Chinese, North Koreans, and the Iranians are really a significant factor in Russia’s performance and Russia’s defense industrial base reconstitution in this conflict.  And we’ve seen that in multiple ways.

For one, the DPRK and Iran are supplying short-range ballistic missiles to Russia.  We’ve seen in the DPRK massive ammunition stores being supplied to Russia according to South Korean intelligence, and I think widely accepted as true, probably millions of rounds.  It may very well be that the North Koreans have provided with Russia, despite being a measly, paltry economy, more ammunition round support than Europe has to Ukraine since the start of this war.  And I think that’s a rather stunning statement, given the size and scope of the European economy.

Moreover, the Iranians have been instrumental in providing Russia with the drone capability.  There is now a joint facility established in Tatarstan where Russia is developing large numbers of drones based on the Shahed model which the Iranians pioneered.  This has played a crucial role in the war in Ukraine.  And I think what is sometimes overlooked is that these are not just one-way transactions.  We should ask ourselves:  What are the Iranians and the North Koreans getting in return?  And here, for example, it’s notable that prior to President Putin and President Kim’s meeting in September of 2023 in the far east, North Korea had failed in multiple space launch vehicle attempts.  After that visit, North Korea managed to successfully put a satellite into space.  And I think there is a lot of speculation – including from the South Korean side – that Russian expertise in this area has proved decisive.

For the Iranians, the drone cooperation also goes two ways.  The Iranians have supplied Russia with large numbers of drones, but now the Russians are perfecting and advancing and improving those drones, and Iran will benefit from that.  There is talk of an upgrade of Iranian missile defense systems.  They have S-300s which are Russian origin; perhaps they’ll get S-400s.  They want advanced Russian fighters.  You can imagine how this rings alarm bells in Jerusalem when we talk about an upgrading of Iran’s missile defense system and a new fighter jet capability, just as Iran sprints to the nuclear threshold.

So again, we are really in an era where the defense partnership between Russia, the DPRK, and Iran is potentially upgrading those rogue nations’ defense military bases in an unprecedented fashion, in a scope and speed that we haven’t seen before in decades.  There was just recently, for example, a DPRK scientific delegation in Moscow.  All of that, I think, should worry us tremendously.

And then there is the PRC, which of course, how could we not quickly make a point about that given that President Putin is in Beijing and now traveling onward to meet with his Chinese counterpart.  Chinese-Russian trade has exploded over the past year to 240 billion in two-way trade, far surpassing any goals that Xi and Putin had set for the two-way trading relationship.  This has signified a growth of some 25 percent from 2022, and almost 50 percent – or 60 percent over 2021 levels.  So huge advances in trade.  And these are in dual-use and commercial technologies and goods that are really important to the Russian war effort – everything from ball bearings to navigation equipment.

My colleagues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies have a good report out on this issue – a variety of components, machine tools, microelectronics that matter for the Russian war effort.  And as Chris Cavoli, SACEUR, testified before the House Armed Services Committee in – I think a month ago, Russian reconstitution is taking place much quicker than any of us would have imagined because of the huge Chinese industrial and economic support.  They are the customers for Russian oil that really have allowed Russia to sustain both revenues, which in turn fund its war effort and outright military kit there.

So with that, I will just say on sanctions enforcement I think the administration is trying to counteract this through four primary methods.  The first is classic export controls, so controlling the items that are actually going to the Russians.

The second is that they’re targeting payment systems, and here we saw an executive order by President Biden in December that is meant to have a chilling effect on payment systems and increasing talk of sanctions, including recent sanctions items against companies active – 10 companies and 12 individuals in Belarus, including the Shenzhen Company that of course has Chinese ties.  And this is attempting to, I think, crack down on the payment processes and systems that are utilized for two-way trade.

Third is pressure on the PRC.  We saw Secretary Yellen and Blinken in China recently, and Secretary Blinken publicly said he communicated to the Chinese if you don’t address this issue of sanctions evasion, we will, which is a rather stark message.

And then the final, of course, is Ukraine’s military attacks.  Ukraine is degrading Russia’s military in Ukraine and also some of its sources of revenue in Russia itself.  And so those four means are ways the administration hopes to get at this issue.

With that, I will just stop and turn it over to questions about this or anything else that you all would like to address.  Thanks very much.

**MODERATOR:**  Thank you for those remarks, Mr. Rough.  And now I would like to open it up for questions.  We’ll go first – start with questions in the room.  If you’re called on, please introduce yourself before your question.  And a reminder for journalists joining us via Zoom:  Please be sure your screen name includes your name, outlet, and country.  And with that, first row, please.

**QUESTION:**  Thank you.  Annett Meiritz, Handelsblatt.  Thank you for all the remarks.  So these bad actor cooperations you talked about, Biden’s promise to the world is democracy against authoritarianism.  Do you see already that he failed in that promise, and to what extent is the current administration partially responsible for that?

**MR ROUGH:**  Well, I think that coming into office Biden very much so held fast to this framing democracy versus autocracy, and through the Democracy Summits he’s tried to implement and execute that agenda.  But I think on the issues that matter, much of that agenda has been left behind.  There has been a turn in the Biden administration’s attitudes towards Saudi Arabia, which I think is one of the best examples of this.

So when it comes to the Saudis, initially they gave Riyadh the cold shoulder rather famously after the Khashoggi finding which they publicized – the Biden administration – intentionally.  And now they are working very closely – hand in glove – with the Saudis on a new regional order in Gaza post – post the Israeli operation.

They have shown little to no embarrassment in working with the Chinese on areas they think are fruitful or necessary for cooperation – for example, climate change – and they sought to selectively engage Russia from the very beginning, including that famous summit with Vladimir Putin in Geneva in the summer of 2021.

So I think there has been a rhetorical sort of rallying theme of authoritarianism versus authoritarianism*, but in execution I don’t think that – that’s always been characteristic of the administration’s approach.  They have wanted from the very start to get back into a JCPOA 2.0 with the Iranians, for example.  And while that policy has failed and is in tatters right now, they sought that cooperation from the very start even when the President was making those arguments.

So I think I view this is a rhetorical rallying cry but not really imprinted on the administration’s actual actions.

**MODERATOR:**  Thank you.  I’ll go next to Olga.

**QUESTION:**  My name is Olga Koshelenko, I am journalist with 1+1 Media Ukraine.  You have already mentioned that NATO membership for Ukraine is not under consideration.  What is the most significant outcome Ukrainian leadership could achieve at this summit?

And secondly, American leadership consistently says that they are not going to send any American troops, including instructors, to Ukraine.  Could this point be reconsidered at this summit?

**MR ROUGH:**  Well, General Brown, I think in the *New York Times* today if I have it right, characterized a NATO mission or a training program for Ukraine as inevitable.  So it may very well come at some point and it may very well be up for consideration, but to date that is obviously a decision for the President and it’s a political decision and it has not been revised, so American forces are not in Ukraine.  But if that report is at all to be believed and well sourced, then perhaps it will be up for consideration at some point.

But I think the administration is making a mistake in not considering NATO membership for Ukraine, conditions permitting, which is to say one can offer membership for accession talks.  President Zelenskyy himself has said he recognizes Ukraine will not get into NATO so long as there is an active war in the country, and so one could offer membership to Ukraine with the caveat that membership will not take place until all of the Allies agree that the conditions are ready for it.  This is a proposal that my colleague Luke Coffey has made in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Europe subcommittee.  He and I have also made it in a report which you can pull up at hudson.org called “A Strategy of Courage.”

And in general – perhaps to go off on a slight digression – I would like to see the administration show a little bit more courage on these issues.  It does not stand to reason to me why, when the Russians are prosecuting an offensive from Russian territory on Ukraine’s second city, which sits mere miles from the border, Ukraine is handcuffed from using Western systems to strike Russian industrial supply and advanced units that are massing on the other side of the border.  So long as Russians can sunbathe in Russia, can build up their war kit there before crossing into Ukraine to fight Ukraine – so long as that is the case, we should not be surprised if Ukraine has difficulties and challenges on the battlefield.  On the one hand, we expect them to break through and bathe in the Sea of Azov in their first counteroffensive, but in the next breath we’re telling them all the things they can’t do and restricting them.

So I think in general the attitude here has to be much more competitive with the Russians.  It has to be much more aggressive in that sense rather than restrictive and, I think, tepid and incremental, which is to my thinking a recipe for failure.

**MODERATOR:**  Gentleman.

**QUESTION:**  I am Hamdi Saleh from Egypt news.  You talked about the connection between the what’s happening in Iran and the alliance with the Chinese and so on, but what we can see – that there is a link between the war in Ukraine and what’s happening in the Middle East, in Gaza.  The supplies of military equipment and so on is really in a problem – facing a problem in terms of supplying both sides.  Do you think the NATO conference will have time to discuss what is going on in the Middle East and how to pacify this particular region?  Particularly in terms – in view of the fact that there was the Arab Summit which was convened in Manama, Bahrain – both were a peace conference.  You think there is a possibility of having at least what you call a panel to discuss what could be done to really pacify the region?

**MR ROUGH:**  Well, for starters, I would say that the Russian-Iranian alliance – and I would characterize it as an alliance despite their differences – was born in the Middle East.  Qasem Soleimani famously went to Moscow when Bashar al-Assad’s forces were beginning to collapse in Syria, brought the Russians in, and the Russians established themselves under the cover of the JCPOA, which kind of I think caused the Americans to look at the region I think rather naively, or it was the vehicle through that.

The Russians established themselves in Latakia, they established an air base and a naval contingent, and they acted as the air force for the IRGC ground forces that backed Bashar al-Assad’s troops and destroyed Syrian opposition.  That was really the starting point for this coalition, which has now expanded to the Ukrainian battlefront, where, as I said, with drone and ballistic missile transfers across the Caspian, the Iranians are reinforcing Iran.*  So there is a Middle East connection in the sense that this relationship, this alignment, and even outright alliance, began years ago and is now playing itself out in Europe.

I have not heard and I would be surprised if this were on the agenda that the Middle East is going to factor in the NATO summit, events notwithstanding.  There could be a major cataclysmic event of one sort or another that intervenes and forces it on the agenda, but Russia will be the top issue.  Terrorism will be an important topic.  Türkiye has consistently insisted that this remain a topic on the agenda, and of course, it is listed in the Strategic Concept as the second threat, so to speak, to the Alliance in the order of the paragraphs from the Strategic Concept that was adopted at Madrid.  I think China will come up, climate change, readiness – these are some of the topics – but I have yet to hear Gaza, the war in the Middle East come up in that way.  So yeah, it’s uncertain to me that – it’s unclear to me that – how and if it would come up.

**MODERATOR:**  Please.

**QUESTION:**  Yeah.  (Inaudible.)  Thank you.  I have another question on Ukraine.  As you already mentioned the G7 (inaudible), but there are going to be, like, a few other events lined up in June, sort of (inaudible) Ukraine conference in Berlin for the (inaudible), then the Ukraine conference in Switzerland after the G7.  So I wanted to ask you if you could elaborate a little bit more what you are expecting, like precise outcomes of those series of events at the beginning of June, including the G7 there, in terms of Ukraine?  Because that’s going to be (inaudible).

**MR ROUGH:**I think the outcome from the Switzerland meeting will be to show the world that there really is only one peace plan on the table, and that is President Zelenskyy’s.  Andriy Yermak came to Hudson Institute last year.  He presented the I think it is 10-point plan for Ukraine at that session, and I think it’s meant to show the world that Ukraine has a plan, and it’s to show the world that Russia is isolated given the number of attendees that are expected in Switzerland.

I also think that each of the principles that undergird the Ukraine plan – the Zelenskyy plan, if you want to call it that – for the war have broad backing in international law and General Assembly resolutions or even a UN Security Council resolution.  So the principles are, I think, relatively accepted.  And hammering that home, drawing attention to it has been, I think, the goal each step of the way since this was rolled out at each of the meetings, and Switzerland being the latest.

After the Berlin meeting, I’m not sure I have too much to add.  Obviously they will be working out the economic needs both now for Ukraine, but also when reconstruction eventually comes.  So how does one build in a private sector component?  This is a German-American initiative that’s relatively new that will also feature, I think, at the Berlin meeting.  And connected to that, of course, is the G7 discussion around windfall profits, and that debate is still alive and still raging – or still ongoing, I should say; perhaps “raging” is putting it too starkly.

But there are some disagreements, as I read it from public press reporting, within the G7 on how to deal with Russia’s sovereign assets, which are frozen in Europe and the United States.  And I would suspect that they want to drive towards an announcement on that at the G7 in Italy.

**MODERATOR:**Pavel.

**QUESTION:**Pavel Novak, Czech Radio.  NATO has a tool which is called the Membership Action Plan, so it’s a roadmap leading to the future membership without guarantee that the state will be adopted as a member.  But so do you think that this plan, providing this plan to Ukraine, is far in distant future for Kyiv?

And if I may, second question about Trump and this worrying that maybe United States won’t respect Article 5 in case that the European partners are not the responsible and they are not paying that 2 percent of GDP for defense.  So I think that everybody will come here and will declare yes, we are fulfilling that – this benchmark.  So is it just rhetoric?  Is it just show before elections?  Or do you think that Trump would fulfill such worrying in case of some deterioration situation in Europe?

**MR ROUGH:**Well, on the Membership Action Plan, that was one of the deliverables from the Vilnius summit, was to lift MAP for Ukraine.  So the Ukrainians did not need to go through the MAP process, just as Sweden and Finland did not either.  The NATO-Ukraine Council was another of the major deliverables.  And I think that’s part of the issue for the Washington summit – the low-hanging fruit has been plucked, so to speak.  The obvious deliverables have already been offered to Ukraine, so now what is the next step?  It’s a bit like the IP4 issue I’ve just described.  Their mere attendance at Madrid and Vilnius was accomplishment enough, but now at Washington they’re looking to take the next step to justify their presence and to make it a relevant agenda item.

And so I think we’ll see an announcement on IP4, and in the case of Ukraine’s NATO aspirations, I’ve laid out some of the ways that they’ll hope to bridge – to use the word that the administration likes to employ – Ukraine’s expectations with where Washington and, quite frankly, Berlin stand on this issue.  And that will include potentially a NATO mission to Ukraine as a deliverable to overcome differences on actual membership, but it’ll include a work towards interoperability of some sort.  It’ll include a statement on NATO-Ukraine Council, and it might include more announcements on bilateral security agreements.

As to your second question on President Trump, not all countries will come to Washington and say that they’ve met the 2 percent threshold.  I don’t think the Canadians are going to hit the 2 percent threshold or come to Washington saying that they are on the cusp of hitting the 2 percent threshold.  In fact, Ottawa has been a challenge on this front for years and one of the most obstreperous members of the Alliance when it comes to meeting their defense spending obligations.  So if we do hit, in the best case scenario, 22 or 23 total members, remember there are 32 Allies in the Alliance, so that leaves almost double digits, if not more than double digits –so more than 10 members – who won’t be able to hit that.

I can’t take you inside of Donald Trump’s mind any more than anyone else can.  But I generally view his statements as anchoring points to try to nudge, cajole, and pressure allies to increase their defense spending so that there is more burden sharing in the Alliance.  And I think that’s one of the reasons looming over the summit, the Republican National Convention, why burden sharing will be a key point of focus, and the improvements in Alliance spending to date.  So some will say let’s celebrate the increased performance of the Alliance, more spending.  And others might say yes, there’s more spending, but we’ve now turn – need to turn commitments into capabilities and capabilities into war fighting ability.  And so long as we have not done that, we still have a lot of work to do.

So it really depends on where you want to put your focus, and I think President Trump will continue to cajole, will continue to push, will continue to pressure until the Alliance gets to a place where it’s totally fit for purpose, where it can take General Cavoli’s DDA Family of Plans  and say:  Each of us has our responsibilities, each of us had our assignments, and we can fulfill those 100 percent.

**MODERATOR:**  We’ll take a question from Zoom now.  Alex, please unmute yourself.

**QUESTION:**  Hey, Zina.  Thank you so much for doing this.  This is Alex Raufoglu from Turan News Agency.  I want to follow up on the question on NATO membership.  Thank you so much again for making it clear about what is – what was the thinking process in Washington prior to the summit.  But we heard from the Secretary in Kyiv – I thought he – well, he used a metaphor, but he was talking about sort of giving a strong bridge to NATO, and he said it should be “strong and well-lit.”  Now, it’s only a metaphor, but what can be done with it in your understanding if the U.S. means it?  If you talk to expert community, they will say that the point of giving Ukraine a clear perspective to – of NATO membership and not tying it to an end of the war would be an important signal in an effort to make Russia change its calculation on whether the war is worth it.  If you subscribe to that analysis – want to ask about that.

Secondly, how much of Georgia’s backsliding from European path – recent events in Georgia, presumably orchestrated by Russia – adds up to the urgency of this NATO membership conversation, whether it’s about Georgia or Ukraine or the other countries?  Thank you so much.

**MR ROUGH:**Well, just to begin with the membership point, to reiterate my own position, I think that at this summit it would be wise to offer Ukraine membership with the final date of accession to be determined when all of the allied members believe security conditions allow it.  So that caveat, I think, is about a reality.  President Zelenskyy himself has said on multiple occasions that Ukraine will not enter the Alliance while the war is raging in his country.  He recognizes this.  At the same time, it makes clear that the West will not give up on Ukraine, that Ukraine’s future is in NATO.  And even a statement that says Ukraine’s future is in NATO – and there is no doubt that there’ll be language like that adopted in Washington – is not the same thing as actually offering membership for – membership to accession talks to whatever date is eventually decided.

So I think there is a meaningful distinction there between saying, like we have since 2008 at the Bucharest Summit, that we’d like to invite Ukraine into NATO, almost a rote regurgitation of language which we’ve adopted each summit and has almost lost some of its meaning, versus taking that next step to membership at whatever date eventually is decided on.  So I think that is meaningful.  I think Anders Fogh Rasmussen just came out with a new proposal that includes, I think, a similar element to it.  He also has an – a no-later-date-than stipulation, I think, as part of his plan.  So these are all some of the creative juices flowing when it comes to what eventually should be offered at the summit in Washington.

As to Georgia, I think the situation in Georgia, much like the situation in the Caucasus writ large and in the post-Soviet states of the Black Sea – Moldova springs to mind, Ukraine to a certain extent as well – is entirely dependent on Russian power.  And when Russia is beat back in Ukraine, it’s the number-one thing that can be done to weaken to Russia’s influence in Central Asia, weaken its influence in the Caucasus – so on both sides of the Caspian – weaken its influences in Ukraine, quite obviously and literally, but also in a place like Moldova.  And so the number one thing that the West can do is to back the – back the Ukrainians and empower them to achieve gains on the battlefield.

I also have to confess I was a little disappointed by what I thought was a milquetoast original – initial statement on the Georgia situation from our own government.  I think a more robust and quick move to sanctions, which should have been teed up and ready, would have been a wiser policy option, thereby preempting, I think, some of the problems that we’ve seen over the past week when the Georgian authorities have almost committed themselves to a course that’s difficult, even with American pressure, to get them to reverse.  But I’ll leave it at that.

**MODERATOR:**Any other questions?  I didn’t see any other questions, neither online nor in person.  Would you like to offer closing remarks?

**MR ROUGH:**That’s okay.

**MODERATOR:**All right.  Then with this, thank you so much to Mr. Rough for your briefing, for briefing us today.  Thank you to journalists for joining us.  This concludes today’s briefing.

**MR ROUGH:**Thanks.

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