NATO’s promised security guarantees cannot be a substitute for Ukraine’s future membership of the Alliance, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday.
“We are not talking about membership today. We are an adequate country, and we understand that we cannot be a NATO member during the war but we want to be sure that we will be a member after the war,” Zelensky said at a joint news conference with the Lithuanian and Polish presidents in Kyiv.
“And that is exactly the signal we are waiting for – that Ukraine will be a NATO member after the war,” he added. “And what to do while we are not in NATO? We also want a signal that Ukraine will get security guarantees, but not instead of membership, but for the period while we are not yet in the alliance.”
Major NATO members want the alliance’s upcoming summit in Vilnius to focus more on steps to bolster practical cooperation with Ukraine instead of opening a process to its membership.
Lithuania and other regional partners hope that NATO members will agree on a clear perspective for Ukraine’s membership in Vilnius in July, but no unanimous consensus on the issue has been found so far.
Nausėda told BNS earlier on Wednesday that the discussion on Ukraine’s prospects for NATO membership was the most complex of all the issues at the moment, but that “we cannot leave Ukraine in a grey area, making promises, but not giving a very clear algorithm on how to achieve the NATO membership after the war”.
The Lithuanian president also said at the joint news conference that skipping NATO’s Membership Action Plan (MAP) would shorten Ukraine’s path toward membership,
“Skipping the Membership Action Plan could significantly shorten this path. The establishment of a NATO-Ukraine council would further strengthen political cooperation,” he said.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has said that NATO could agree on dropping the MAP requirement for Ukraine, a position earlier taken by Washington.
However, President Joe Biden said a few days ago that the US would not make special steps for Ukraine to join NATO, despite the Russian invasion.
“They’ve got to meet the same standards. So, we’re not going to make it easy,” he said.
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