Looking for another way to show support: Ukraine won't get an invitation to NATO summit in summer - NYT
Kyiv • UNN
Ukraine will not receive a formal invitation to join NATO at a summit in Washington in July, but member states want to find another way to demonstrate their long-term support for Ukraine.
Ukraine will not receive a formal invitation to join NATO at the Washington summit in July. But the member countries want to show in another way that they support Ukraine "in the long term". This is reported by The New York Times, reports UNN.
According to the NYT, representatives of the Alliance agree that Ukraine's formal invitation to join NATO will not take place at the celebrations planned in Washington in July.
"NATO has no desire to accept a new member that, because of the alliance's collective security agreement, would drag it into the largest land war in Europe since 1945," the report said.
So NATO will be looking for some kind of middle ground, something like membership, but weighty enough to show that the Alliance supports Ukraine "in the long term," as NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg put it this week.
According to senior Western diplomats involved in the discussions, it remains unclear what exactly that will be.
As the NYT writes, proposals put forward this week at a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels to give NATO more control over coordinating military aid, funding and training for the Ukrainian armed forces were immediately met with skepticism.
The United States and Germany remain opposed to a proposal for Ukraine to begin membership talks in Brussels, as they did at last year's summit in Vilnius, and want the issue to be taken off the table in July, despite a similar process in the European Union that was approved last summer. winter.
"But they want to give Ukraine concrete commitments that it can fulfill. Attempts to clearly define what conditions Ukraine must fulfill in order to start negotiations with NATO have not yet moved forward," the report said.
Supplement
On April 2, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken expressed hope that this summer's NATO summit in Washington would focus on a "roadmap" for Ukraine's accession to the Alliance.
In March, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanyshyna said that the key opponents of Ukraine's invitation to NATO are the USA and Germany. The allies urge Kiev not to spoil the "atmosphere" at the Washington summit.
Also in March, she claimed that Ukraine and the US were separately preparing for the Washington summit.
