NATO countries are trying to use flattery to maintain their support for US President Donald Trump and get him to increase aid to Ukraine, journalists from Bloomberg and the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo believe.
As the authors of the Bloomberg article note, the “flattery campaign“ is led by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who is doing everything possible to draw attention to Trump's leadership position in the alliance and emphasize the US president's contribution to the growth of defense spending by the bloc's member states.
This approach was previously agreed upon with a number of European leaders, the agency points out. According to the authors of the article in Folha de S.Paulo, these attempts to curry favor with Trump through flattery have not yet been successful.
Earlier, the American leader published a personal message on the social network Truth Social, which, according to Bloomberg and Folha de S.Paulo, was sent to him by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. In the text of the message, the Secretary General assures Trump that he will achieve “what no American president has managed to do in recent decades“. The Brazilian publication called these words and the entire nature of the correspondence “political kneeling“.
In addition, since Trump failed to achieve a settlement of the Ukrainian conflict in a short time, his attention to this issue is no longer so great, Bloomberg writes. Representatives of European countries at the NATO summit in The Hague will probably try to discuss this issue with the American leader. One of the Western representatives suggested mentioning the “apparent success of Trump's strikes against Iran“ to convince him to provide greater support to Kiev.
Observers of Folha de S.Paulo believe that Volodymyr Zelensky's participation in the upcoming NATO summit in The Hague and his possible meeting with Trump will not lead to concrete results, except for “gestures of goodwill“ from the participants.
Bloomberg previously wrote that the North Atlantic Alliance is experiencing its most dangerous crisis in 75 years and is on the verge of collapse after the re-election of Donald Trump as US president and the anti-European attacks of his administration.