With no agreement on whether to guarantee Ukraine’s entry into NATO once the war ends, the allies are considering offering Kyiv a faster-than-usual accession process when leaders allies meet at the summit that will take place in Vilnius in July.
“There are more and more indications that everyone could agree on this”, said the German Minister of Defense, Boris Pistorius, yesterday about the information that indicates that the United States is willing that Kyiv does not have to go through the same process formal that has been required in the past in other countries. “I would be open to that,” added Pistorius.
This formula, which would exempt Kyiv from completing the traditional entry road map, opens the door to a possible compromise between the capitals that advocate that NATO must promise Kyiv during the meeting in the Lithuanian capital immediate entry as soon the war will end, as President Volodymyr Zelenski is asking, and the position of Washington and Berlin, reluctant to take this step even if they do not question that the country will one day be a partner of NATO, which already in 2008, under pressure from the ‘ Bush administration, they said that their future is in this alliance.
For now, the allied defense ministers agreed yesterday on measures to “bring” Ukraine closer to the military organization, and prioritized the short term before entering into discussions about possible security guarantees or membership.
“The most urgent thing now is to make sure that Ukraine survives as a sovereign and independent nation and can continue to be a democratic country in Europe because, if it does not succeed, there is nothing to talk about about accession,” he said. the allied secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, in the same line as the US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin. “We’re at a really critical time” and “I’ve been focused on making sure we give Ukraine the security assistance it needs to be successful in this fight.”
From the meetings held this week in Brussels within the framework of NATO and the contact group for Ukraine, in which 50 countries participate, new commitments have come out of the delivery of weapons and ammunition, in addition to the delivery of ” hundreds” of short- and medium-range anti-aircraft missiles by the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. Denmark and the Netherlands, for their part, will begin training Ukrainian pilots in the handling of F-16 type aircraft, a decision that will lead to the delivery, in a few months, of more modern combat aircraft and which solidifies the ties between NATO partners and Ukraine.
At the same time, the allies have decided to raise the level of political cooperation and turn the NATO-Ukraine bilateral commission into a council, in which the 31 allies and Kyiv will take decisions on security “on an equal footing”.
The first meeting of this body will take place during the leaders’ summit scheduled for July 11-12 in the Lithuanian capital, in which the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries will offer long-term security guarantees to Ukraine. “We don’t know when this war will end, but when it does, we need to put in place a framework that will ensure the security of Ukraine and make sure that history doesn’t repeat itself, and that Russia doesn’t decide to regroup and rest.” to rearm and attack again”, says Stoltenberg. For Zelenski, only joining NATO is a guarantee that Russia will not attack his country again.
