The NATO summit in Washington, D.C. intends to describe Kyiv’s path to membership in the alliance as “irreversible”, which is the best common denominator at the moment, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda has said.
“At the moment, the text [of the declaration] is still being fine-tuned, but as regards Ukraine, it has been agreed that the text will reflect the principle of irreversibility and that this is a kind of bridge to membership,” Nausėda told reporters in the United States on Wednesday.
“From this point of view, it seems that today NATO is not prepared to say more than it has said, in other words, any commitment to Article 5 would mean that action needs to be taken here and now. How to do that if even sending troops to Ukraine is still taboo? this is the best common denominator that can be achieved at the moment,” he added.
The NATO summit in Washington is taking place on the 75th anniversary of the alliance. Among other things, it is aimed at sending a message of support to Ukraine, which is fighting the Russian invasion.
US President Joe Biden kicked off the summit by announcing Washington will provide Ukraine with an additional Patriot air defence system.
“I think we are moving forward compared to the Vilnius text, but the Vilnius summit and it has been mentioned many times today during the talks with the leaders, was a very good base on which we can now build new bricks and a new text,” Nausėda said, referring to the NATO summit in Vilnius last year.
The summit is also overshadowed by fears over Biden’s fitness to lead the US after his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump.
Nausėda said that Biden looked very good at the start of the summit.
“If somebody was looking for physical weakness factors, he could certainly have been disappointed because the speech was good, fundamental, focused on the fact that we will support Ukraine and that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin cannot win the war in Ukraine, that Putin is not winning the war in Ukraine because he is suffering huge losses and fighting there for much longer than he wanted to,” the Lithuanian president said.
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