This week’s Vilnius summit has given the world an image of a very united and cohesive NATO on behalf of the Ukrainian cause. Turkey’s clear alignment with the guidelines of the Atlantic Alliance with its approval of Sweden’s entry is a hard diplomatic blow for Russia, which is increasingly alone and isolated. After the incorporation of Finland, NATO is already at the door of its house with thousands of kilometers of border with Estonia, Lithuania and, since last year, with the Scandinavian country. Sweden’s forthcoming entry will turn the Baltic, once a neutral zone, into a fully NATO-controlled sea.
It is true that Volodimir Zelensky wanted more. But it is unfeasible for Ukraine to join the Atlantic club today, in the middle of the war. It would be tantamount to inviting Russia to extend the conflict to the Alliance countries. But it became clear that Ukraine would enter through the NATO front door when peace comes.
There is no turning back from the consolidation of the West’s unconditional support for Ukraine. Now no one seems to remember, but since the war broke out, speculation has not stopped about the difficulty of maintaining aid to Ukraine for so long and the resistance of public opinion in each country to the supply problems due to the lack of russian gas. All this is past. The conspiracy of the countries that make up NATO to carry the war to the end is a path of no return.
For this reason, at the moment of Vladimir Putin’s greatest weakness, both on his internal front with Wagner’s coup attempt and on his external front with his failure in the invasion of Ukraine, the moment is drawing near to force diplomatic channels. with the Russian president. It was already seen at the Vilnius summit that war materiel is scarce and that NATO “is not Amazon”, as the British Defense Secretary, Ben Wallace, stated. The Ukrainian counteroffensive is turning out to be more complex than expected, and the end of the war is still a long way off. Therefore, it would now be time to reactivate all possible diplomatic channels to find a way out of the conflict. And of course, also an outlet for Russia. Now is the time.
