NATO may take over some US responsibilities for Ukraine aid

The Scoop

NATO may soon take on more responsibility in providing aid to Ukraine, as fears grow over the implications for the military alliance if ex-President Donald Trump were to return to the White House.

The organization’s headquarters is leading talks aimed at taking some of the coordination of Western military aid to Ukraine from the Pentagon and transferring it to NATO, three Western officials with knowledge of the discussions told Semafor, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to release details of the talks. NATO is aiming to conclude the discussions by July, when the bloc holds its annual summit which will be in Washington, D.C. this year, the officials said. It is unclear when — if at all — the tasks would be shifted across the Atlantic.

The negotiations are partly driven by fears of Trump’s return to office. European officials vividly recall Trump’s prior term, during which he repeatedly questioned NATO’s value. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Trump has said were he in office, he would end the conflict within 24 hours without offering details, but analysts have suggested he would be more amenable to concessions of Ukrainian territory than U.S. President Joe Biden. (After a recent meeting with Trump, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said the former president “will not give a penny” to Kyiv if elected.)

A spokesperson for NATO did not respond to a request for comment, while the Department of Defense referred Semafor to remarks from U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Asked by reporters on Tuesday whether the Ukraine-related tasks would be transferred to NATO, Austin replied: “We’re focused on making sure that we can get Ukraine the security assistance that it needs to be successful today and in the near and mid-term.”

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The talks relate to the work of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, also known as the Ramstein Group, organized in the early weeks of the Russian invasion to coordinate military aid sent to Ukraine. It brings together the defense chiefs of more than 40 nations, including all NATO members and Western allies such as Japan and South Korea, and is led by the U.S. defense secretary, ultimately becoming what Politico described as “an under-the-radar yet central force in equipping the Ukrainian military.”

Concerns center in particular around replacing Sec. Austin, who hosts the monthly meetings, were Trump to return to power, a senior European diplomat told Semafor.

“There’s been talk about how to coordinate a robust setup to protect the aid and donations to Ukraine from changing political winds,” the diplomat said. Another put it thus: “A NATO-ification of the support for Ukraine is emerging.”

In an interview, Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said, “We need to organize all the support that we can give to Ukraine, and I think that NATO is very well suited to do that. So we also support initiatives in this regard,” but declined to elaborate further.

“There are certain things that only we can do,” Eric Ciaramella, a former acting senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council told Semafor, referring to military logistics, capabilities, and planning. “But when it comes to organizing the summit-type meetings, certainly there are plenty of examples where the Europeans have run with that.”

Even so, Ciaramella said efforts to ramp up NATO’s role in organizing Western support for Ukraine would face challenges, namely building a consensus across the 32-member alliance, which includes countries like Hungary that have regularly been holdouts in European efforts to aid Ukraine, and also figuring out how to include non-NATO allies such as Australia and Japan.

Notable

• Foreign Policy’s Jack Detsch wrote that NATO is creating a war command to coordinate a joint response to a potential Russian attack on the alliance’s soil.

• As U.S. aid stalls and the Kremlin is ramping up its own defense industry, “Russia is forecasting more battlefield wins,” Dara Massicot wrote in Foreign Affairs.