Former NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen (2009-2014), who is currently advising Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, insists that Kyiv must be offered an invitation to become a NATO member at next month’s summit in Vilnius.

Rasmussen, a former prime minister of Denmark, spoke on LRT TV’s programme Topic of the Day on Wednesday.

Should Ukraine receive an invitation to join NATO at the Vilnius summit this July?

Personally, I think time has come to extend an invitation to Ukraine and it should happen already at the Vilnius summit. If not in Vilnius, then at the latest next year. But in Vilnius we should outline a clear path for Ukraine towards membership of NATO.

What possible obstacles can prevent the invitation from being extended next month?

Very often I hear the argument that we cannot send an invitation to Ukraine before the war is over. I think that is an extremely dangerous argument because that would, in fact, give Putin an incentive to continue the war to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.

We can never ever accept that. Our door is open and Putin is not and should not be the doorman. So we could send a very clear signal to Putin in Vilnius by sending an invitation to Ukraine. We will tell Putin: forget everything about you stopping this process towards NATO. Ukraine will become a member of NATO.

You recently said that even if NATO members fail to agree on Ukraine’s membership by the Vilnius summit, some individual countries – like Poland and the Baltic states – may nevertheless send their troops to fight in Ukraine. Our own defence minister commented that your remarks were “speculation”. What do you base your assumption on?

Obviously it is speculation. But what I did was to caution against a split within NATO, a split that could happen if we are not sufficiently ambitious in Vilnius.

So I would encourage all allies to be very ambitious and keep unity within the European allies, but also across the Atlantic between Europe and the US. I caution against the split, but it could happen if a number of allies think that we didn’t do enough to help Ukraine at the Vilnius summit.

The German chancellor and the presidents of France and Poland recently met in Paris. Is it possible that it was there that they discussed a more active involvement of Poland in the military action in Ukraine?

The topic they discussed in Paris was how to guarantee the security of Ukraine in the future. And I would say we need to give Ukraine security guarantees because even in the case that we send an invitation to Ukraine to join NATO, it will take some time to work out how exactly that could happen.

And until then, Ukraine will need security guarantees to avoid a new Russian attack on Ukraine. Just like Finland and Sweden – they received security guarantees from a number of allies once they had applied for and once they got invited to join NATO. Exactly the same should be the case for Ukraine. And they discussed that in Paris.

And I appreciate very much that President Macron has indicated that we should provide such security guarantees to Ukraine. And President Duda of Poland is very forthcoming in that regard.

Again, I hope that the Germans would realise that if we do not give those security guarantees now, if we accept the argument that we cannot do all this as long as there’s a war, then de facto they will prolong the war. And it should be in German interest to put a quick end to this war.

And that’s why we should agree on giving Ukraine security guarantees.

Weapon deliveries are now the best security guarantee for Ukraine. What a year ago we were told were absolute red lines for NATO – Leopard tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, F-16 fighters – are now either being delivered or promised to Kyiv. They are or could be protecting thousands of lives. Why do you think it took so long to start those deliveries?

I asked the same question and really I don’t understand why we have imposed all those restrictions on our weapon deliveries. We should deliver all the weapons the Ukrainians need to win the war. And to win the war is to kick out all Russian troops from Ukrainian territory.

The Ukrainian people has the will to fight. It’s our duty to give them the means to fight. And if we do that, I’m confident that Ukrainians can retake lost land. That takes heavy battle tanks, long-range missiles, but eventually also fighter jets.

And I think it’s been embarrassing to see how long we have discussed all those things before taking a decision. That has given Putin room of manoeuvre for escalating the war. And you cannot win a war by an incremental step by step approach. You have to surprise and overwhelm your adversary.

So I appreciate the weapons we have given to Ukraine, but we have done it much too slowly.

Does NATO have the muscle to stop Putin’s regime, which is killing civilians, levelling cities, kidnapping Ukrainian children – which is one of the accepted signs of genocide – and is engaging in nuclear blackmail? Why isn’t NATO putting a stop to this and what would it take to do it?

First of all, let me stress it’s not NATO as an organisation that is involved in this war in Ukraine, but individual allies help Ukraine and they are legally entitled to do that, according to the UN Charter Article 51.

Ukraine, of course, has the right to defend itself against an aggressor. But Ukraine also has a right to request assistance from its allies to help counter that aggression. And that’s exactly what is going on. So we are on firm legal ground in helping Ukraine.

Could we do more? Yes, definitely, we could do more. We could do it much faster. And I think we should set the goal that Ukraine should and must win this war. We cannot allow Putin any success in Ukraine because if he gets success in Ukraine, he won’t stop there.

He’ll go to Moldova, Georgia, and eventually try to put pressure on the Baltic states, including Lithuania. We all know the problems about the Suwalki Corridor. He wouldn’t attack the Baltic state because you are members of NATO, but he would try all other sorts of pressure. But you are protected because you are members of NATO. And that’s exactly why Ukraine should also join NATO, because ultimately, NATO’s Article Five is the only firm security guarantee you can get.

Historically, NATO has been involved in stopping some regimes. But what would you, as a former secretary general of NATO, advise to Lithuania: send its troops to Ukraine or not?

No. I mean, the Kyiv Security Compact that I prepared together with the head of the presidential administration, [Andriy] Yermak, and presented to President Zelensky in September last year, this Kyiv Security Compact does not foresee the deployment of foreign troops on Ukrainian soil.

The purpose of the Kyiv Security Compact is to make Ukraine capable of defending itself by itself. And to that end, we will help the Ukrainians build such a strong military that they can withstand all possible Russian attacks in the future.

And that’s why we need Ukraine as a strong and stable Eastern European ally, as a bulwark against the still aggressive Russia. And that’s why Ukraine belongs to NATO.

Your term as the secretary general of NATO was framed by Russia’s attack on Georgia in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Throughout that term, many NATO members were expressing concern and condemning aggression, but at the same time accusing the Baltic states of being “Russophobic” for calling Russia a terrorist state. The NATO-Russia Council held 11 official meetings after the annexation of Crimea, the last one was in January 2022. Perhaps it’s time to have someone from Eastern Europe – less naïve when it comes to Russia – in the NATO leadership?

We should have listened much more carefully to all the warnings from Eastern European allies. You were not naïve and you told in very clear language what we could expect from Russia. But Western Europe didn’t listen.

So retrospectively, we have made a lot of mistakes. And the major mistake was to underestimate the ambition and the brutality of Putin. So now we should learn lessons from history. And the lesson we have to learn is: appeasement with dictators does not lead to peace. On the contrary, it leads to war and conflict because the appetite is endless.

And that’s why they only respect one language, the language of power and unity. And we should demonstrate both at the Vilnius Summit: power and unity.