Trump heads to Turkey for NATO summit as Russia invades Ukraine

President Donald Trump is heading to Turkey for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit, as the alliance comes under pressure from Russia’s continued military aggression in Ukraine and the United States’ growing insistence that NATO members quickly increase their defense spending.

Those pressing issues come on top of ongoing disputes surrounding the US’s war against Iran and its earlier attempts to seize Greenland, the territory of NATO member Denmark.

Trump is a key figure in all of those problems.

“I can think of a number of issues where this could go wrong,” Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution told CNBC’s “The Exchange” Monday in a preview of the conference.

A positive outcome of the summit will involve NATO continuing to share the burden of military spending, as well as finding more ways to put pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin, O’Hanlon said.

Progress on the former goal seems within reach: NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in May said the task ahead is to “turn Allied commitments into tangible results” at the summit.

But the prospect of a breakdown in talks looms large, with Trump constantly talking up NATO, including its members’ refusal to heed US calls for help to clear the economically important Strait of Hormuz amid its campaign against Iran.

“I don’t expect great things, but incremental progress and no explosion is acceptable,” O’Hanlon said.

Trump is expected to arrive in Ankara on Tuesday afternoon after leaving the US on Monday evening, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told reporters in a telephone preview of the trip. He is scheduled to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan upon arrival, and then participate in a bilateral meeting with him after the arrival ceremony, followed by a NATO leaders’ dinner.

After a “family photo” with the leaders on Wednesday morning, Trump will join a working session, then hold bilats with Zelenskyy and Syrian President Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa.

Trump will hold a press conference, then travel from Ankara to the White House, Kelly said.

On Sunday, Russia attacked the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, with a barrage of missiles and hundreds of drones, killing at least 11 people and injuring many others, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and media reports.

The attack ahead of the summit, which Zelenskyy is expected to attend, ensured that the war will be focused on the 32-member alliance, which has already called Putin’s war in Ukraine “the biggest threat to Euro-Atlantic security in decades.”

A day before the strikes, Trump and Putin held a “business-like and constructive” phone call initiated by the US that lasted about 90 minutes, the Kremlin said.

Trump emphasized in the call that Russia and the United States can see their “great potential for mutually beneficial cooperation” once the war in Ukraine is over, while Putin presented a positive picture of the efforts of the Russian military as “the real situation on the battlefield,” according to Putin aide Yuri Ushakov.

Trump also spoke that day with Zelenskyy, who later said the strikes in Kyiv underscored Ukraine’s dire need for more military aid — especially from the US.

“The United States and Europe have enough power to stop this terrorism,” Zelenskyy said early Monday.

He hopes to leave the NATO summit with commitments by member states to strengthen support for Ukrainian aviation. He is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with Trump in Turkey on Wednesday afternoon, according to the White House.

But Trump, who once clashed with Zelenskyy and praised Putin, may not agree that the solution to the four-year war is to strengthen Ukraine.

When Trump was asked Monday morning why Putin seemed under no pressure to avoid war following their phone call, he insisted that the Russian leader really wants to end the war.

“I think he’s feeling pressure,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “He wants to end it, and Ukraine wants to end it, and we are in talks, and we will see if we can end it.”

“Putin wants it to end, I’ll tell you that emphatically,” Trump continued, adding that the two men had “a good call.”

“And President Zelenskyy actually wants it to end now. And we will go to NATO, and we will be talking about it, and I think we will get it. I think we will end it,” he said.

O’Hanlon, of Brookings, told CNBC, “I don’t think there’s much evidence that Putin is close to making a deal. I hope President Trump is right, but I haven’t seen the evidence yet.”

Although NATO members have already agreed last year to increase their spending to 5% of GDP from 2% by 2035, the Trump administration wants countries to reach that goal as soon as possible.

“The goal is for Europe to take over the defense of the European continent,” Matthew Whitaker, the US ambassador to NATO, told CNBC earlier Monday. “We don’t go, we just do a little.”

The top US official, in a phone call previewing the summit, told reporters that they expect “billions of dollars in announcements” from Ankara’s side.