NATO countries are divided over Ukraine joining, officials say

BRUSSELS – NATO countries are divided on typology political guarantees could give Ukraine at the next NATO summit in mid-July, with the US, Germany and France resisting pressure from central and eastern European allies to provide a detailed “road map” towards membership, Western officials said after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers this week.

In a sense, the debate is fictitious, as Ukraine is at war and much of its territory is occupied by the invading Russians.

And a lot will depend on Ukraine’s success in its much-heralded counteroffensivescheduled for late this spring or early summer.

The debate was one of the central points of the meeting of NATO foreign ministers held this week in Brussels, as in the previous one, held in Bucharest (Romania) in November, in which United States of America he has also resisted making political promises to Ukraine about accelerated membership.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyhe declared that he will participate in the NATO summit to be held in mid-summer in Vilnius (Lithuania) only if he is offered a concrete path or strengthened steps towards NATO membership.

Ukraine applied to join the alliance in September, but NATO officials saw the request as a question of a more peaceful future.

Ukraine would also like some concrete reassurances on the security guarantees that NATO could offer once peace is established.

The kind of guarantees and long-term partnership NATO could have with Ukraine, short of full integration, is another contentious issue.

NATO members will continue to discuss in Vilnius what they are collectively willing to offer Ukraine, but finding a compromise that is something more than symbolic and let it satisfy Kiev.

“We have several weeks of tough negotiations ahead of us to fill these gaps and work out a political outcome,” a Western official said.

But some of Ukraine’s neighbors have been pushing for a membership path, including Poland, the centerpiece of NATO’s eastern flank.

On Wednesday, during a state visit to Warsaw (Poland), Zelensky got by the president Andrzej Duda strong support for early entry into NATO.

The Secretary of State Anthony BlinkenWhen asked on Wednesday whether to present a membership proposal at the Vilnius meeting, he said it was more important to focus on “very practical steps” train and equip the Ukrainian army for the counteroffensive.

“Our attention is now focused on do the needful to help Ukraine repel Russian aggression and actually enable it to regain more territory it took from Russia,” he said.

“That’s our intense goal.”

Blinken added that NATO “is also examining what we can do, in the long term, to increase Ukraine’s ability to discourage aggressiondefend against it and, if necessary, defeat it again in the future”.

“And a lot is bringing Ukraine up to NATO standards and interoperability. And I suspect this approach will continue at the Vilnius summit.”

In 2008, NATO leaders promised Ukraine and Georgia that they would eventually join, but without setting a date. Russia went to war against Georgia that year, and Russian troops remain in parts of Georgia, as well as large swathes of eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.

“Of course, the door to NATO is still open,” Blinken said.

c.2023 The New York Times Society