THE HAGUE, Netherlands ― NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday called Russia “the most significant and dire threat facing this alliance,” an assessment that could cause friction with the group’s largest member nation, currently led by a president who routinely defends Russia’s dictator, Vladimir Putin.This week’s summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was shortened down to a social dinner hosted by Netherlands’ king Tuesday night, and then a two-hour business meeting Wednesday as a way to minimize the disruptions Donald Trump can cause, NATO analysts said.Rutte, nevertheless, tried to assure the other 31 member countries that he is still focused on Russia’s “war of aggression” against its neighbor, Ukraine. To a question from a Ukrainian journalist, he said that the joint statement at the summit’s end will, contrary to reports, support that country.“You will see important language about Ukraine, including connecting the defense spending up to 2035 to Ukraine and the need for Ukraine to stay in the fight. This is a clear commitment by allies,” Rutte said.He added that a commitment made by NATO a year ago to eventually allow Ukraine into the alliance remains in effect.“NATO allies agreed that for Ukraine there is an irreversible part of Ukraine to enter NATO, and that is still true today, and they will still be true on Thursday, after the summit,” Rutte said.How that sentiment will be processed by Trump is unclear. In the days after Russia began its massive invasion in 2022, which even early on included attacks on civilian neighborhoods, Trump called it “savvy” and “genius.”NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte holds a pre-summit press conference at the World Forum on Monday in The Hague, Netherlands.Omar Havana via Getty ImagesEarlier this month, at the G7 meeting of the world’s largest democratic economies, Trump essentially blamed the invasion on leaders of the group for having hurt Putin’s feelings by expelling Russia from the then-G8 in 2014.“Putin speaks to me. He doesn’t speak to anybody else,” Trump said. “Because he was very insulted when he got thrown out at the G8, as I would be, as you would be, as anybody would be.”That expulsion, though, took place in response to Putin’s first invasion of Ukraine, which resulted in his annexation of the Crimean Peninsula as Russian territory.Rutte’s assurances notwithstanding, however, summit organizers have taken steps to shorten the annual meeting and remove items from the agenda that Trump would find objectionable, according to NATO observers.For example, leaders agreed at the 2024 summit in Washington, D.C., to create a comprehensive strategy to deal with Russia as a growing threat. NATO staff in Brussels began work on it, reaching out to all 32 member nations for input, with the goal of having a report ready for members to approve at the 2025 meeting in The Hague.Between those two meetings, though, pro-NATO President Joe Biden was replaced with anti-NATO President Trump, who continues to describe the alliance as if they were a protection racket run by the mob, with the United States in the role of the mob boss. He has said, publicly and repeatedly, that the other NATO members are “delinquent” in their ’”dues,” so that he would not protect them if they were attacked by Russia.In fact, the alliance is a voluntary association of nations who agree to use military hardware and systems compatible with each other to allow common defense. After Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, members ― at the urging of then-President Barack Obama ― agreed to increase defense spending to at least 2% of their respective gross domestic products by 2024. In response to Russia’s more recent invasion in 2022, the alliance is planning to approve a target of 5% at the formal business meeting Wednesday.The Russia strategy, nevertheless, was not completed and will not be presented at Wednesday’s meeting, as originally envisioned.“That was the homework they gave themselves at the NATO summit a year ago,” said Jan Techau, a Berlin-based analyst with the Center for European Policy Analysis. “The Americans insisted and said, ‘No, we don’t want this.’ And so the whole thing was shelved.”