NATO leaders yesterday went further than ever in the promise that Ukraine will one day become the organization’s 33rd partner, as read on the marquee in the auditorium under which President Volodymyr Zelensky received a mass bath in the center of Vilnius yesterday and as the posters with which the Lithuanian Government has decorated the capital say, it fears the same end as this country if the Alliance does not react. The text, however, is far from the “direct and clear” invitation that Kyiv longed for and reflects the fear that more explicit language would drag allied countries into open conflict with Russia.
“Ukraine’s future is in NATO” and the Alliance will extend an “invitation” to it to enter when the leaders “agree and meet the conditions”, affirms the summit statement agreed by the leaders, a commitment which includes different decisions to support the process from a military and political point of view, especially the simplification of the accession process. The promises will be completed with the security guarantees that, bilaterally, the G-7 countries – and especially the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany – are negotiating with Ukraine and which will be closed in the coming days.
Kyiv aspired to go further. The absence of a date of possible access or details on the conditions that Ukraine will have to meet for NATO to extend the long-awaited invitation were interpreted, however, as a sign of “weakness” of the allies in front of Moscow by part of President Volodymyr Zelensky. The language of the text can be interpreted by Russia as “an invitation” to perpetuate the campaign of “terror” against Ukraine, Zelenski warned before traveling to Vilnius.
“It has no precedents and it is absurd that a calendar is not set neither for the invitation nor for the accession of Ukraine while, at the same time, an ambiguous mention is added to some ‘conditions’ for inviting Ukraine”, he criticized the Ukrainian leader after learning the draft of the allied declaration. But the Ukrainian desire for the Alliance to specify what circumstances should occur or what measures should be met for the allies to take this step completely clashes with the caution required by the United States and Germany, among other allies, to avoid “automatisms ” or “compromise” the outcome of hypothetical peace talks with Russia.
The fear of Ukraine, which has been on the minds of all the allies during the Vilnius negotiations, is a repetition of the scenario that took place in 2008 at the Bucharest summit, when the allies, pressured by Washington, agreed that Ukraine, like Georgia, would one day be a NATO member. Although the Alliance took no real steps to make the prospect a reality, Russia interpreted it as a warning and, six years later, annexed Crimea.
Paradoxically, since that moment, Ukraine has made giant strides towards the Atlantic Alliance, which since that year began providing it with non-lethal military aid and training to defend itself against Russian aggression, a cooperation that has increased exponentially since, on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of the country. The war, moreover, altered the security landscape on the continent so much that two traditionally neutral countries, Finland and Sweden, asked to join NATO. The first became the 31st partner in April, while the second, blocked by Turkey, hopes to enter soon and thus complete a historic expansion of the Alliance, which will have a border with Russia throughout the baltic
Despite Zelenski’s protests, the package of measures NATO is offering Ukraine to shore up military and political support is unprecedented. First of all, the Alliance has agreed to set up a NATO-Ukraine Council in which the two sides will sit “on an equal footing” to consult and take measures in the field of security. The first meeting of the forum will take place today in Vilnius, with the participation of Zelenski and the other allied leaders.
The Alliance has also approved launching a multi-year defense plan to accelerate Ukraine’s military transition to leave behind Soviet-era equipment and improve interoperability with allied armed forces. The decision could be financially supported by roughly 7 billion euros in aid over the next five years, Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt said during a recent allied meeting in Oslo.
The third decision taken by the leaders to underpin the promises in Kyiv is to simplify the accession process and remove the condition of completing an action plan for the accession, a move which Germany refused until a few days ago, but which reflects the high level of cooperation that already exists between the allied and Ukrainian armed forces as a result of the donations of war material and the training of troops.
“This will make Ukraine’s accession process one step, not two,” Stoltenberg explained at the final press conference of the first day of the summit when he listed the differences between the Bucharest declaration of 2008 and the one adopted yesterday in Vilnius, especially the fact that the Alliance adopts the necessary “instruments” to make Kyiv’s entry a reality. “There has never been stronger language about joining NATO” nor has he been “so specific” about what he will do to ensure that “Ukraine joins its ranks.”
Deliberately, the statement does not detail what circumstances would have to occur for NATO to decide to invite Ukraine, but there is one obvious one: the need for entry not to drag the countries of the Alliance into a war with Moscow . “Ukraine is at war, it’s a fact. Ukrainian forces have shown bravery and talent that have impressed the world, but at the same time, it is a full-scale war, and allies agree that while there is a war, it is not the time to bring Ukraine in as a partner”, clarified Stoltenberg. For Kyiv, this approach will encourage Moscow to perpetuate the war or turn it into a frozen conflict.
Another novelty derived from the war in Ukraine is the political and military cooperation between NATO and the European Union, which are now preparing to join forces to bring the country closer to the two organizations. “Despite the fact that they are different processes, they converge because they are the same actors and the same issues are discussed”, explain European diplomatic sources in reference to the shipment of weapons to help Kyiv defend itself, the financial aid and the the kind of reforms he will have to make to enter both NATO and the EU, more demanding in the case of the community club, but coincident in matters such as the modernization of institutions or the fight against corruption. “They are processes that reinforce each other”, “parallel tracks, but synchronized to a certain extent”, they add.
