It's become one of the most desirable clubs in Europe — the NATO Club.

This week's NATO summit in Lithuania has highlighted how in a troubled world it's a heavily sought-after membership. This has been one of the strongest themes of the second and final day of the NATO meeting.

The summit also highlighted the power of "the Zelenskyy Factor". The hosts proved how strong their support is for NATO – a support which can be understood, in part, by an extraordinary museum in Vilnius – the KGB Museum.

And what was the outcome of the summit? Here are the highlights of the final day of the NATO summit.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has proved the best recruiter NATO has ever had.

NATO — the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation — was formed in 1949 in response to what the US and several European countries saw as the threat from the Soviet Union. The US and its European founders conceived it as a counterweight to the Soviet empire.

NATO's website says it all:

"The North Atlantic Alliance was founded in the aftermath of the Second World War. Its purpose was to secure peace in Europe, to promote cooperation among its members and to guard their freedom – all of this in the context of countering the threat posed at the time by the Soviet Union. The Alliance's founding treaty was signed in Washington in 1949 by a dozen European and North American countries. It commits the Allies to democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law, as well as to peaceful resolution of disputes. Importantly, the treaty sets out the idea of collective defence, meaning that an attack against one ally is considered as an attack against all Allies."

But the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, breaking up into 15 separate countries.

With its collapse the NATO club lost much of its raison d'etre and lustre. Some of its own members wondered what was the point of funding an organisation formed to counter something that no longer existed.

Donald Trump, when he became US president, made clear he thought NATO was an indulgence for European countries funded by Washington.

Then along came Vladimir Putin. He began a long-term project to re-capture what his generation of former KGB officers saw as the glory days of the Russian empire.

Mr Putin's aggression, typified by the invasion of Ukraine last year, has unintentionally translated into a one-person NATO membership drive.

Attending the NATO conference in Vilnius this week I was struck by the fact that those countries who are already part of NATO are delighted with their membership – and it would appear the smaller the country, the greater the delight.

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are good case studies. Their populations are 2.8 million, 1.8 million and 1.3 million respectively.

To put that into perspective, that means Estonia only has a population three times the size of Newcastle — it would have no chance of defending itself against Russia the way Ukraine has been able to, the latter with about 44 million.

Speaking to Lithuanians this week, it's clear that they have a sense that without the protection of NATO they would not stand a chance should Russia invade. A common sentiment is that were they unaligned nobody would come to their defence.

Their view – which I found was also widespread during a month I spent recently in Ukraine – is that had Ukraine been a member of NATO then Russia would not have invaded.

The strong view among many people in NATO countries, and Ukraine, is that while Mr Putin may be a bully they don't think he would want to pick a fight with the US and its 30 NATO allies.

Another example is Finland which is delighted that it was admitted to the NATO club earlier this year. And then there's Sweden – relieved that after months of lobbying it has been admitted. Turkiye's Recep Tayyip Erdogan had resisted their entry.

But after negotiations with Sweden he relented. The case of Sweden shows how NATO is working at the moment – in return for entry, Erdogan was able to extract from Sweden a commitment that it will overhaul its counter-terrorism structures.

How extraordinary is this? So keen was Sweden to enter that it allowed the leader of another country to lay down the terms by which it runs its counterterrorism operations.

In reality Sweden may not make significant changes, but to get NATO entry it has had to commit to President Erdogan that it will do so.

That says something about how NATO membership is being viewed. Sweden has long been a non-aligned country, so joining NATO is a major departure.

He's one of the most high-risk individuals in the world but also one of the most powerful.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy's power comes from several sources. One is that every word he utters is amplified around the world.

And so when he took to Twitter to deliver a broadside against NATO he knew it would have an impact. NATO delegates here panicked – for the sake of a unified front against Russia, the last thing they wanted right now were cracks in NATO's edifice.

WHO WRITES THIS GLORIOUS SHIT FOR THE ABC?   HA:

By global affairs editor John Lyons in Vilnius

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