France hopes Ukraine will receive a pathway to NATO membership at the Vilnius summit in July, according to Valerie Rabault, First Vice-President of the French National Assembly.
“I think we can get consensus at the summit because, within NATO, we have different ideas with different members sharing different opinions but [...] if we define the steps, I think we could get there [reach consensus] and I think we can get it,” she told BNS.
“Now we need to explain how and what will be the different steps, so I think [and] hope this will be the case in one month,” Rabault said on the sidelines of a high-level meeting of NATO parliamentary speakers held in Vilnius last week.
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Previously, French President Emmanuel Macron called on the West to offer Ukraine "tangible and credible" security guarantees as he visited Bratislava. He said various NATO members could provide these guarantees as Ukraine waited to join the alliance.
In Bratislava, Macron also said that “if in a few months to come we have a window for negotiations, the question will be arbitrage between a trial [of the Russian president] and a negotiation, and you have to negotiate with the leaders you have de facto, and I think negotiations will be a priority”.
Meanwhile, Ruslan Stefanchuk, chair of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada who spoke to BNS last Thursday, warned against having any illusions about potential negotiations with Vladimir Putin.
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