The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) leaders declined to give Ukraine a direct invitation to NATO membership saying that they will extend an invite when “conditions are met”. No timeline was also set for Ukraine to formally join the organisation. This was decided on a two-day summit that started on the 11th of July at the Lithuanian capital Vilnius which was attended by all the 31 members of NATO. However, the leaders did show their support towards Ukraine’s NATO membership declaring that Ukraine’s future is in NATO.
This failure to give Ukraine an immediate invitation and not setting a timeline for joining was not taken well by the Ukrainian President Zelensky. He was also at Vilnius before the summit addressing a crowd of Lithuanian supporters. Prior to that, he criticised the decision taken by NATO. He wrote on social media that it was unprecedented and absurd to not extend an invitation and not even give a timeline to Ukraine for joining the alliance. While asked about the criticisms made by Zelensky, the Secretary General of NATO Stoltenberg affirmed that the alliance has never used any “stronger language” to support Ukraine in its war.
Out of the 31 members of NATO, those from eastern Europe backed Ukraine’s proposal to join NATO as they believed that this would be the only way to keep Russia from attacking Ukraine again. On the other hand, members such as the United States and Germany were more cautious in their moves to back Ukraine to join NATO as they feared this might result in direct conflict between NATO and Russia.
Earlier, in an interview with CNN ahead of his Europe trip, the United States President Joe Biden also said that Ukraine is not ready for the NATO membership He mentioned that he doesn’t think there would be any unanimity among the members of NATO to bring Ukraine as a member in the middle of an ongoing war. However, these western members did affirm to further extend their support in providing Ukraine with security, weaponry and military equipment that will help Ukraine in its ongoing war.
Ukraine’s history with NATO.
Ukraine had applied to join with the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) back in 2008. In the Bucharest summit of 2008, it was decided that Ukraine will eventually be a part of NATO. But this plan of Ukraine was scrapped in 2010 by the then elected President of Ukraine who wanted to keep close relations of the country with Russia.
But later on in 2014, joining NATO became a priority for Ukraine as Russia annexed the Crimea, a part of eastern Ukraine and showed their support to the armed separatist groups of Crimea.
Afterwards, in a summit held in 2021, the NATO leaders said that their decision made in 2008 to make Ukraine a NATO member still upholds and the Secretary General of NATO also affirmed that Russia could not veto Ukraine to join NATO. But before any further decisions could be taken regarding Ukraine joining NATO, Russia had launched their full scale military operation in Ukraine in the February of 2022 that sparked a war between the two countries that is still continuing.
