The Summit That Wasn't Worth the Jet Fuel
Thirty-two leaders flew to Ankara for a one-page declaration and no promise to meet again. What the "boring by design" summit says about NATO in the Trump era = new video explainer, free for all
Recorded during a stopover, with the smell of jet fumes still hanging in the air from the departing leaders’ aircraft - including Trump’s Qatari-gifted 747, swapped out at the last minute for the trip home - this week’s explainer video unpacks a summit engineered to be boring, and largely succeeding.
Among the threads: why a one-page declaration and a vague “see you next time” have leaders quietly questioning whether NATO summits need to happen annually at all (a case former U.S. ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder makes forcefully in Politico and retold below); the other burning odour in the air - the smouldering Trump-Meloni relationship, being watched very carefully in Italy; and the comparison lighting up social media between the heads of FIFA and NATO, two men who have turned the buttering-up of Donald Trump into something approaching a new spectator sport.
Today’s video is open to all subscribers. It’s also a good example of what World Briefing Plus members get every week: exclusive video analysis that goes beyond the newsletter - the context, colour and on-the-ground detail that doesn’t fit on a broadcast hit. If you find it valuable, consider upgrading to keep it coming.
🎥 Watch the full video above.
Was Ankara a wasted opportunity? Ivo Daalder, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO, argues exactly that in Politico’s From Across the Pond column - and notes that leaders left without even confirming next year’s planned summit in Albania, offering only a vague nod to “our next meeting.”
Daalder writes that the one-page Ankara Summit Declaration amounted to boilerplate, and that while Donald Trump was reportedly genial behind closed doors, he emerged to berate Britain, France, Germany and Belgium over the Iran war, order a halt to trade with Spain, and revive his claim to Greenland. Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s year of shuttle diplomacy and flattery, Daalder argues, achieved only the summit’s true goal - a gathering designed, in one foreign minister’s words, to be as boring as possible.
The deeper failure, in Daalder’s telling: past summits in Madrid, Vilnius and The Hague forced real decisions. Ankara produced none - no roadmap for Europe assuming the air, naval, intelligence and command responsibilities Washington is already shedding. His conclusion is blunt: the U.S. is no longer a reliable ally, and managing the shift to a Europe-led alliance is job number one.
Editor’s note: Daalder’s diagnosis lands close to the argument we’ve been making in these pages all week: NATO spent Ankara answering the wrong questions - congratulating itself on spending targets while leaving Russian resilience and hybrid warfare largely unaddressed. A disclosure, once more: we covered this summit from Rome, not Ankara, after Turkey rejected accreditation for independent and critical-media outlets - a decision that says as much about the summit’s host as the declaration says about the alliance.
The US and Iran again traded strikes in exchanges that continued into Thursday, as observers reported a “dramatic” drop in the number of ships travelling through the Strait of Hormuz. The US says it hit 90 military targets, some near the Strait. Iran says 14 people have been killed in the past two days. State media also reported that targets near the Bushehr nuclear power plant were hit, citing the deputy governor of the province. The US has not commented on the latest strikes. Iran said it targeted US assets in Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar in response. Later on Thursday, Tehran launched more strikes on sites in Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq, state-linked media reported. Separately, huge crowds gathered as Iran’s late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was buried after six days of funeral events. Crowds massed on the streets of Mashhad in north-eastern Iran waving Iranian flags, while some were pictured holding signs carrying death threats directed at US President Donald Trump. Khamenei was killed on 28 February during the first hours of US and Israeli strikes against Iran - BBC
Overnight Ukrainian drone attacks struck oil facilities and tankers in at least three Russian regions and knocked out power in partially occupied Ukraine, local authorities said Thursday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed strikes on oil depots in the Stavropol and Tver regions, a reserve fuel facility in an undisclosed region, an oil pumping station in the republic of Bashkortostan and a marine loading terminal in the Rostov region. In the central Tver region, acting Governor Vitaly Korolyov said a storage tank at the Tver Oil Depot caught fire “as a result of efforts to repel” an overnight drone attack. Firefighters managed to contain the blaze by 7 a.m. local time, he added, noting that there were no injuries. Stavropol region Governor Vladimir Vladimirov said an unspecified “industrial facility” caught fire in the attack, also adding that there were no injuries. An hour later, he said the flames reached combustible tanks, leading to an evacuation of nearby homes. Authorities in the southern Rostov region said two oil tankers were damaged in a drone attack in the Sea of Azov, with one of them still on fire as of 7 a.m. Governor Yury Slyusar said there were no injuries and the crew members of both tankers were brought to safety - Moscow Times
Ukraine opened a criminal investigation on Thursday after crowds of people in the western city of Lviv surrounded and overturned an army conscription vehicle the night before. The incident drew a swift backlash from Ukrainian officials, some of whom called on citizens to direct their anger at Russia and not the army. The unrest erupted after officers detained a man suspected of evading military service and took him to a draft centre, authorities said. “An investigation has been launched into the circumstances of an incident that occurred in Lviv involving servicemen of the Ukrainian armed forces, police officers, and around 200 civilians,” Ukraine’s prosecution service said. “Two criminal proceedings have now been initiated on the grounds of obstructing the lawful activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during a special period (martial law) and using violence against a law enforcement officer,” it added - Euronews
Moldova: MoldATSA Scandal Reaches the Foreign Ministry
The fallout from Moldova’s MoldATSA scandal has now touched the Foreign Ministry. On July 2, the MFA confirmed media reports that Dumitru Vangheli — the state air traffic services director dismissed last week over inflated salaries and a falsified CV — has a half-brother serving as Moldova’s ambassador to the UAE and, concurrently, Bahrain.
As World Briefing reported last week, Vangheli landed the top job at Moldova’s air traffic authority on a CV claiming commercial flying experience with Air Canada - credentials that turned out to consist of a flight simulator game and a pizza delivery route in Montreal.
The ministry defended Anatolie Vangheli as a career diplomat of nearly 30 years, currently on his third ambassadorial posting. His CV includes ambassadorships to Greece, Israel and Cyprus, and a stint as the ministry’s secretary general (2015–2017). He was appointed to the UAE in 2024 and accredited to Bahrain in 2025.
The disclosure adds a fresh nepotism dimension to a scandal that has already claimed political casualties: PAS deputy Radu Marian resigned June 29 as chair of parliament’s economy and finance committee, admitting he erred in recommending Dumitru Vangheli for the MoldATSA post without vetting his résumé. President Maia Sandu’s cousin, Anastasia Taburceanu, earlier quit the enterprise and pledged to return over 1 million lei in salary top-ups after investigative reports revealed she out-earned the director. Anti-corruption authorities completed searches of MoldATSA’s offices June 30, flagging multiple violations.
Source: NewsMaker.md (Vera Balahnova), July 2, 2026
The first shipment of Mexican natural gas to Asia is en route, evidence of the reshaping of global energy markets. Mexico’s new LNG export terminal is one of several developments on the Pacific coast of the Americas with confidence in traditional export avenues waning. Five years ago, the two main arteries for international oil and gas trade were Russian LNG pipelines to Europe, and the Middle East to Asia via the Strait of Hormuz. But both are profoundly changed, the International Energy Agency chief wrote in Foreign Policy, by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the US war in Iran. The implications are long lasting Fatih Birol argued, as nations look for ways to minimize risk, including renewables and diversification of supply - Semafor
A Canadian drug trafficker who spent more than three years on the run — recently wanted by U.S. authorities in connection with a cross-border gun-smuggling plot involving a “sophisticated” criminal organization — has been captured while working out at a gym in Medellín, Colombia. Video posted online by Colombia’s defence minister Wednesday night shows heavily armed security forces raiding the facility and a man later escorted away in handcuffs. On social media, Medellín’s mayor identified the man as Arif Jhuman, a Canadian citizen who went by the alias Gillani and is wanted by U.S. federal authorities in connection with a firearm trafficking conspiracy. Colombian police later told reporters Jhuman had been the subject of an Interpol red notice and was captured at a gym within a shopping mall. “Medellín is not a refuge for criminals,” Mayor Fico Gutiérrez said in the post on X. Defence Minister Pedro Arnulfo Sánchez said Jhuman had also been sought by Canadian authorities for violating his parole - CBC
A star White House reporter is not sold on President Donald Trump's explanation for why he swapped Air Force Ones to return from this week's NATO summit.Reporter Maggie Haberman told CNN's Kaitlan Collins that she found Trump's explanation for abruptly ditching his shiny new jet gifted to him by the Qatari government "a little hard to believe." Trump claims that he hailed his VC-25 model of Air Force One, which he has dogged as being too old and not fitting for the presidency, to take him home from Turkey because, supposedly, he wanted to show off his Qatari-made jet at a base in Europe "so the soldiers can see it." - The Daily Beast
The journals…..
