NYT: Ukraine will not be invited to join NATO at the summit in July
Ukraine will not be invited to NATO at the alliance summit in July, despite the threat of defeat, writes the NYT. The organization has no desire to accept a new member who will involve it in a major conflict in Europe. They want to offer Kiev something else.
When NATO leaders gather this summer to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the military alliance, the last thing they will want to discuss is the Russian military marching on Ukrainian soil, and all because of Europe's inability due to its weakness to provide Kiev with the necessary support. As a result, Ukraine is still waiting for an official invitation to NATO. However, representatives of the alliance agree that this will not happen at the Washington celebrations scheduled for July. NATO has no desire to accept a new member who, because of the collective security agreement, will drag it into the largest land war in Europe since 1945.
This forces NATO to look for some kind of middle ground: something besides membership, but significant enough to show long-term support for Ukraine, as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg put it this week. According to senior Western diplomats who participated in the discussions, it is still unclear what exactly is being discussed.
Proposals put forward this week at a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels to give NATO greater control over the coordination of military assistance, financing and training of Ukrainian forces immediately faced a wave of skepticism. The United States and Germany still - as at last year's Vilnius summit — oppose inviting Ukraine to Washington for membership talks and want the issue removed from the agenda in July, despite the similar process approved last winter in the European Union. What they want is to make concrete, achievable commitments to Ukraine. There has been no progress so far in trying to clearly define what conditions Ukraine must fulfill in order to start negotiations with NATO.
However, by July, none of this will matter if Russia continues to gain ground and Ukraine is in danger of defeat — the prospect is becoming more real every month as Republicans in the US Congress continue to block a $60 billion aid package to Kiev. "The situation on the ground may look much worse than it is today, and then the real question will arise: “How can we be sure that Russia will not win?”" — asks the former US ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder (Ivo H. Daalder). — We may all think that the NATO summit will be held the same way as today, but it is not so. The last two months have not been good for Ukraine, and it will not get better in the near future," said Mr. Daalder, now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Last year, at the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, Ukraine was once again assured that one day it would become a full member of the alliance, but for this it needs to change something in terms of democracy and security. The vague promise alarmed Kiev and its most ardent supporters in the Baltic states, Northern and Eastern Europe.
Nine months later, Ukraine is still unable to cope with the consequences of a military counteroffensive, as a result of which it spent precious artillery ammunition and other weapons, but at the same time was unable to retake any significant territory from Russia. The country remains in dire need of weapons, especially for air defense; its Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said on Thursday that Russia had hit Ukraine with 94 ballistic missiles in March alone. "I do not want to spoil the NATO birthday party, but I feel that I must speak on behalf of Ukrainians with a sobering message about the situation with Russian air attacks on my country, the destruction of our energy system and economy, and the killing of civilians," Kuleba said at NATO's Brussels headquarters.
According to him, this summer in Washington, he "carefully listened" to the discussions of fellow diplomats on how NATO could resolve the issue of Ukraine's membership, and cautiously replied in the same spirit. "The form and content of the next step towards Ukraine's membership in NATO should be determined by the allies themselves," he said. "We will look forward to the result, but, of course, we believe that Ukraine deserves to be a member of NATO and that this should happen as soon as possible."
Stoltenberg tried to fill the gap by putting forward two proposals this week on further support for Ukraine, which he hopes can be approved by the time of the July meeting of NATO heads of state in Washington. The first option, according to which NATO, rather than the United States, should be responsible for coordinating funds and arms supplies to Ukraine, has raised objections from Hungary and other allies, since it is capable of directly dragging the alliance into war. The United States also opposes such a way out of the situation, according to Daalder, although the Biden administration has so far refrained from public criticism. On Thursday, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken only touched on the issue in passing, praising the American-led process for "extraordinary results."
The other option — to provide Ukraine with $100 billion in aid over five years — has caused confusion, as it is unclear how to get member countries to contribute, especially given budgetary and political constraints such as those that are delaying the US congressional aid package to Kiev. But Stoltenberg said such plans are vital to ensure continued support from NATO, not scattered donations. At the same time, he welcomed the recent shipments of drones, missiles, armored vehicles and ammunition from the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Finland, France and Germany.
Stoltenberg added that the commander-in-Chief of the NATO Allied Forces in Europe, U.S. Army General Christopher G. Cavoli, was instructed to develop a plan to provide reliable and predictable assistance to Ukraine in the coming years. "If the NATO allies do what they have to do, the Ukrainians will be able to achieve new successes," Stoltenberg said. "That's why the Allies need to do more, dig deeper and provide comprehensive military support faster, as well as provide themselves with stronger and more reliable structures for the long term."
The subtext of this urgency is NATO's desire to protect Western support for Ukraine from Donald Trump — as has been said in recent months — if he is re-elected in November. Trump has long despised NATO, ridiculing its members for their unwillingness to pay a "fair share" of security costs, and in February he generally said that because of this he would not help the Europeans if Russia attacked them.
In Brussels, Blinken said that he hears "from ally after ally" that "our commitment and participation are indispensable for this alliance" and its support for Ukraine. According to him, the latter is working on the changes necessary for joining NATO, and, without going into details, noted the various efforts of the bloc to develop new guarantees for the war-torn country before the meeting in July. However, it became clear from his comments that the world should not expect a sharp deviation from the status quo. "These conversations in the last few days have been focused on exactly what we will do at the summit," Blinken said. "To clarify this issue, we are in touch with all countries and experts, and this will continue until the summit."
Author: Lara Jakes