It is the US that doesn’t want Ukraine in NATO

Washington: Despite over a year of military badgering by Russia, Ukraine’s NATO membership remains a distant dream. While the US is leading the Western nations in helping Ukraine fight back, it also seems to be scuttling Kyiv’s prospects to full member of the military alliance.

According to a report by the Financial Times, US has ganged up with Germany and Hungary against countries such as Poland and the Baltic States that are pushing for chalking out a clear “roadmap” for Ukraine’s integration in NATO.

The faultlines among western nations on the matter became public at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels this week, the FT report said, adding, that the development comes in the run up to the leaders’ summit due in Vilnius in July.

The bickering over Ukraine’s post-war status comes amid Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s threat that he would attend the Vilnius meet only if his country’s membership of NATO has been chalked out.

Differences on Ukraine’s NATO membership

In Brussels meeting, there was a strong debate among foreign ministers about what Ukraine should be offered. There were differences in demand among allies, in contrast with NATO’s broad unity since Russia’s president Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, 2022.

“We’ve got several weeks of hard negotiations ahead to close those gaps and craft a political outcome,” the report quoted a western official.

The 31-member alliance reached into the consensus that membership is not a short-term option and could not be seriously discussed amid the ongoing war.

The report further mentioned two people, who attended the meetings this week, saying that a growing number support offering Ukraine “a political path” to membership in Vilnius that would “thicken” the bonds between the Brussels-based alliance and Kyiv. “The US, however, was pushing back against that proposal,” they added.

“The road [to Vilnius] is still very rocky,” a second western official said.

Will Zelenskyy attend NATO summit this July?

The negotiations come within days after Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that he won’t attend the summit if no tangible steps towards NATO membership, such as postwar security guarantees, would be presented to Ukraine from its members or deeper collaboration with the alliance.

In 2008 NATO agreed Ukraine would become a member but has provided no specific timeline. Since then, there has been no advancement in the procedure. Back then, it was the US who called for NATO to grant Ukraine a concrete accession timetable or Membership Action Plan, but it was Germany and France who pushed back expressing concerns that the move would provoke Russia.

Ukraine formally applied for NATO membership last year, following Russia’s invasion. So did Finland and Sweden — the former having joined the alliance earlier this week.

Why US is opposing Ukraine’s NATO membership?

The report said the US is worried that strengthening bond during the war could fuel Putin’s narrative of a battle between Russia and NATO itself and that Moscow may escalate the conflict, including by potentially deploying nuclear arms.

“In order for us to get to the question of when and how to get Ukraine into the alliance, we must, as the secretary-general has noted, ‘ensure that Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent nation’,” the FT report quoted a senior US official as saying.

Instead the US is asking allies to stay focused on short-term military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, to help it resist and eventually fight off Russia’s invasion.

Possible option for Ukraine

Keeping in mind the ongoing conflict, the members during the meeting considered one option could be to upgrade the existing NATO-Ukraine commission to a NATO-Ukraine council. Doing so would elevate Ukraine’s status as a partner of the alliance and make it more involved in NATO meetings and consultations.

Notably, Russia has such a format with NATO but is has been put on hold since the invasion.

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