NATO Founding Day: How the Alliance Helps Ukraine and When Accession is Possible
Kyiv • UNN
April 4 marks the anniversary of the founding of NATO. The Alliance provides comprehensive support to Ukraine to strengthen its defense capabilities. The issue of Ukraine's accession to NATO remains complex.
Today, April 4, marks the 76th anniversary of the creation of the NATO military-political alliance, writes UNN.
Details
The prerequisite for the creation of the North Atlantic Alliance was a meeting on March 4, 1948 in Brussels of representatives of Belgium, Great Britain, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and France, at which they discussed the idea of signing a treaty on mutual military assistance by Western countries against the background of the beginning of the Cold War and potential threats from the Soviet Union.
On April 4, 1949, in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, representatives of Belgium, Great Britain, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Canada, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United States and France signed the North Atlantic Treaty, which entered into force on August 24 of the same year.
Currently, NATO has 32 members. Sweden joined the North Atlantic Alliance on March 7, 2024.
Ukraine hoped to receive a Membership Action Plan in NATO in 2008. However, as it turned out later, Germany and France categorically did not support the idea of granting Ukraine a MAP at that time.
In February 2019, amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine came into force, according to which the course towards Euro-Atlantic integration of Ukraine, i.e. joining NATO, was enshrined in the Preamble.
On September 30, 2022, Ukraine applied for membership in the North Atlantic Alliance in an accelerated manner.
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Stanislav Zhelikhovsky, a candidate of political sciences and an expert in international affairs, said in a commentary to UNN that the issue of Ukraine's path to NATO remains complex and multidimensional, especially in the context of recent statements and actions by world leaders, and Ukraine has been striving to join the Alliance in recent years and become an integral member of this organization, given that NATO could best help in the context of strengthening defense capabilities, security, and investment in the economy.
"I think it was very right that we paved this Euro-Atlantic path a few years ago, after 2014, and included it in the Constitution. That is, Ukraine has a clear direction, a vector of development, and it will do everything possible to join the Alliance in the future, but we must understand that this path is not easy, and therefore we need to do a lot of work, but if we talk about the assistance that the Alliance has provided, starting, for example, with the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, NATO provides comprehensive support aimed at strengthening defense capabilities and resilience against Russian aggression, and the main areas of this assistance may include financial and military assistance, and as of the first quarter of 2025, NATO allies have pledged to provide Ukraine with more than 20 billion euros," says Zhelikhovsky.
According to him, when it comes to long-term commitments, at the NATO summit in Washington in 2024, the allies announced their intention to provide Ukraine with at least 40 billion euros in 2025 to ensure sustained support for Ukraine's victory.
And this is really very important, given that we still have hopes for the countries of the Alliance as those who will be able to support us in the future. And, of course, it is important for Ukraine that this support lasts as long as possible, although we understand that not all states can cope with this, especially in the context of the latest events that are taking place in the United States after the change in the political landscape, and when the United States is actually distancing itself from European affairs, and from Ukraine as well, when it comes to military and financial support
He emphasizes that given that Ukrainian military units are not fully equipped with weapons, NATO's support is especially important, especially in the context of Russia's ongoing aggression against Ukraine.
The expert notes that Ukraine-NATO relations began in 1991, and over time Ukraine has expressed its desire to join NATO.
"There were different periods, both quite close and mutually beneficial, but there were also periods when our relations were put on hold. 2008 was one of the turning points, not only in the context of Ukraine's integration into the Alliance, but also in general in the sense of our state-building, as well as for European world security as a whole. Ukraine had great hopes that at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008, we would be able to obtain a membership action plan in the Alliance and make it possible for us to become a full member of this organization in the future. We remember what happened at the Bucharest NATO summit in the context of what could happen and the actual attack on Ukraine and Georgia. By the way, in the case of Ukraine, it was said that there could be an attack on Crimea and Donbas. That is, even then, Moscow was obviously harboring plans in relation to neighboring countries," the expert adds.
Zhelikhovsky notes that France and Germany were also against Ukraine joining NATO, but at the same time the United States supported the accession. In addition, he recalls that Ukraine itself "helped" Russia after Viktor Yanukovych came to power by adopting a law that deprived Ukraine of its desire to join NATO.
Reference
In 2010, the Verkhovna Rada adopted the law "On the Principles of Domestic and Foreign Policy", which, inter alia, provided for Ukraine's non-aligned status.
It stated that "Ukraine, as a European non-aligned state, pursues an open foreign policy and seeks cooperation with all interested partners, avoiding allegiance to individual states, groups of states or international structures". The main principles of foreign policy are: Ukraine's adherence to the policy of non-alignment, which means non-participation of Ukraine in military-political alliances...".
However, in 2014, Ukraine lost its non-aligned status and resumed close cooperation with the Alliance, and in 2019 this was enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine. In addition, in July 2023, it was decided that Ukraine no longer needs a membership action plan.
We insisted on this at the Bucharest summit... too specific deadlines for accession were not determined and we actually moved on to signing various security agreements and started working with the Alliance in various possible areas, but we still see that subsequent summits were not encouraging. Yes, we were told that NATO's doors are open, these are standard formulations, which were written in the final communiqués of these summits. And in general, during various kinds of meetings, it was also said about this, but in fact this prospect has become so vague for us so far, and even 2024 did not give us a positive result, when there were hopes that Joseph Biden would make it possible to invite Ukraine to NATO, but this did not happen
According to him, the EU may become an alternative to NATO for Ukraine, which will allow Ukraine to strengthen its own defense capabilities if the Ukrainian state does not get a place in the Alliance.
"We see this in the example of the presented white paper of the European Commission, which actually defines a five-year period as important in the context of strengthening the defense capabilities of the countries of the European Union. (...) Another possible alternative that can be mentioned is multilateral security guarantees, that is, obtaining security guarantees from individual states or a group of countries, similar to the model used by other countries, for example, Israel, South Korea, Japan, and some others, that is, which have agreements with the United States," the expert emphasized.