US President Donald Trump said Wednesday his closely watched meeting in The Hague with Ukraine's leader Volodymyr Zelensky "couldn't have been nicer".
"You know, we had a little rough times sometimes, but he couldn't have been nicer," said Trump of the meeting, seemingly referring to an infamous shouting match between the two leaders in the Oval Office.
Trump also said he was talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the war, saying: "I think progress is being made." That meeting was praised as "substantive" by Zelensky.
That said, despite the insistence by NATO chief Mark Rutte that Ukraine's bid for membership remains "irreversible", the summit statement avoided any mention of Kyiv's push to join after Trump ruled it out.
Trump had rattled allies on the summit's eve by appearing to cast some doubt on the validity of NATO's mutual defence clause -- known as Article Five of the alliance treaty.
But the pledge was reaffirmed unequivocally in the summit's final statement -- and Trump drove the point home at his closing press conference.
"I came here because it was something I'm supposed to be doing," Trump said in closing remarks to the press, when pressed on the mutual defence clause known as Article Five.
"But I left here a little bit differently," said the US leader -- who was visibly delighted at the red carpet welcome and the praise lavished on him by NATO's Rutte, among others.
"Without the United States, they couldn't really have NATO. Wouldn't work," Trump said. "It will in the future, because now they're paying much more money."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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