“Donald, you have brought us to a very, very important moment for America, Europe, and the world,” - it's hard to disagree with these words that NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte wrote in a private message to Donald Trump, and Donald Trump shared with the world. This is a crucial point that will undoubtedly distinguish World War III from World War II. In the late 1930s of the last century, the trend was to flatter Hitler and hope it would fly. None of the potential allies of the anti-Hitler coalition had to be danced around so thoroughly. I must admit that it was embarrassing to listen to a successful politician with years of experience as Prime Minister of the Netherlands repeating on camera that there was nothing wrong with his message spreading across the whole country. But who was not wrong in that moment: the NATO secretary general or my sense of zeitgeist - we will only be able to say in five years. Either rational politicians will deal with the mad commander-in-chief of the world's most powerful army with humiliating flattery… or we are still sitting in an unmanageable carriage that is rushing down the mountain with all its might because Western democracy has failed to prove its viability to all other regimes. 

But back to the moment with the sweet taste of civilizational decay. The moment when the forty-fifth and forty-seventh president of the United States (that is, chosen by the American people for the second time quite deliberately, like a good old McDonald's hamburger instead of all that healthy avocado toast) realizes that he holds the fate of European security in his hands. And absolutely realizing that not a year from now or three years from now - Europe, accustomed to relying on America for security just as it has for years relied on Russia for oil and gas - will do anything about that reliance - Trump is enjoying himself. The peak of his enjoyment goes by the name Vladimir. You don't think he doesn't realize how everyone shakes every time he writes or talks about talks with Putin, do you? Trump is not a politician; he is a repeatedly bankrupt businessman. Think back, perhaps some of you know someone like that: repeatedly bankrupt but rich, never once put behind bars, though maybe should have been. No, these people have an instinctive sense of the moment. That's why, on his way from the States to The Hague, Trump quotes not only Rutte's message but also his conversation with Putin: “Vladimir asked if I needed help with Iran, and I said, no, I don't need help with Iran, I need help with you.” He doesn't doubt for a moment the intended effect. But now, unlike 2019 in London, where Macron, Trudeau, Johnson and company openly mocked Trump without noticing the camera, which pissed him off then and made him get away early - everyone is watching the grateful expression on his face.

I'm sure there will be a meeting with Zelensky. Trump has felt so much groveling around him that now he wants to see Zelensky do it. Because in February at the White House, he behaved... humanely. That is anti-diplomatic. One hundred percent not the way literally everyone is behaving with Trump now (as if forgetting that this is Trump of the second term, not the first; Trump with a completely obedient Congress and Supreme Court, which can do little to the praised American system of checks and balances). He also tried to do it in B1 level English. That's when a person understands almost everything at the everyday level, but can say .... let's put it this way, not everything. No reader who knows enough Ukrainian to understand this column needs to be reminded what happened in February at the White House between Zelensky and Trump. Everyone has that memorized. Rest assured, Trump does, too. He can ignore how military aid to Ukraine is being “stitched” into 5% of defense spending and presented to him as his victory. He can ignore how Rutte repeats at every opportunity: last year in Washington, all member states of the alliance accepted that Ukraine's path to NATO is inevitable (this wording was so feared to be lost because of Trump's position that they decided to do without it at the current meeting). But to personal drive or cringe - he pays attention effortlessly, because he simply doesn't know how to pay attention to anything else but himself. 

That is why the shortest summit in NATO's new history, about which only a linivorous person has not already written, that at it - based on security costs - every minute of a single joint meeting costs NATO's budget over 1 million euros, is not just a summit to test the alliance's stability. There's been more than one. It is not a summit to check the alliance for unity - for example, France has already left NATO to return there. It's a summit to test the alliance's backbone.

When Trump was asked the day before whether he would be willing to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to NATO's Article Five, Trump said it “depends on your definition” of the article. “There are many interpretations of Article Five,” he said. And added: But I pledge to be their friend. Which, in Trumpian English, means: I will defend those I would consider nice friends. I have strong doubts that the summit was made short precisely to please Trump. Rather, it is more likely to end, preferably in a state no worse than the one in which it began.

And that's as it goes.

One of the alliance's senior security officials, speaking to the press on the margins of the summit, was forced to answer a series of questions about whether he thought Putin would find the alliance unable to act under Article 5, and then might attack a member of the alliance, such as one of the Baltic states (which have been waiting for this for years). His answer reminded me of my own beginning of 2022. When I had already packed an “alarm” backpack, but was still saying that it was economically disadvantageous for Putin to attack us. You see, said one of the alliance's senior security officials, I don't think Putin is trying to decipher Trump's messages; he just knows it's very dangerous for him to attack NATO, so he won't.

I irresistibly wanted to give him a branded sugar set from Ukrzaliznytsia, one of whose trains was hit by a Russian ballistic missile the day before. On behalf of everyone who knew for sure that it made no sense for Putin to attack.

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