A two- day summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, has started in The Hague, Netherlands.
It is holding at a time that Russia is pounding Ukraine, easily one of NATO ‘s most desirous membership applicants.
Ukraine desires membership but its application has been stalled by growing members’ concern that admitting it would be a declaration of war against Moscow, which is against the expansion of the military alliance.
Early delegations at the venue included those of Canada, Britain, France and Germany.
Ukraine is not a member but is President, Wladimyr Zelensky, on invitation, arrived early, apparently to lobby key delegations on its prayer for more moral and military support to confront an increasingly potent Russia intent on taking and annexing more of his country’ s territory.
Details of the agenda of the summit were not available at press time, but ahead of the formal opening, members were consulting informally to present a common front to the insistence of American President, Donald Trump, that member- states commit at least 5 per cent of the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to their defence.
In making the demand, Trump said that under the America First Policy, his country would no longer bear a disproportionately high percentage of the cost of funding NATO and securing members.
Though Ukraine is not yet a full.member of the alliance, its link to the Western political philosophy bloc and the dislike of Russia by the alliance members, especially after its invasion of Ukraine three years ago, have all blended to make NATO support Zelensky in the war against Russia.
Trump had, early this year, claimed that NATO had committed in excess of $400billion( about N64 trillion) in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine over the past three years.
Russia has taken either partial or full control of four regions of Ukraine, approximately 20 per cent of the territory of Ukraine.
On the battle front, Russia, overnight, continued its huge military strikes on Ukraine with targets hit in Dnipro and Kiyev, the capital.
In Dnipro, not fewer than seven persons, including two children, died and more than 70 others wounded in the attacks.
In the Sumy Region bordering Russia, at least three more persons were killed in overnight attacks.
The NATO is the best known solitary alliance in the contemporary world, after the dissolution of its only rival, the Warsaw Pact of the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) during the administration of Mikhail Gorbachev.
