NATO commits to future membership for Ukraine

BUCHAREST, Romania — NATO doubled down Tuesday on its commitment to one day include Ukraine, a pledge that some officials and analysts believe helped prompt Russia’s invasion this year. The world’s largest security alliance also pledged to send more aid to Ukrainian forces locked in battle with Russian troops.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with NATO foreign ministers in Romania to drum up support for Ukraine as Russia bombards energy infrastructure ahead of the frigid winter. Russia cannot stop the alliance’s expansion, NATO leaders said.

“NATO’s door is open,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said before chairing the meeting in the capital, Bucharest.

He praised North Macedonia and Montenegro recently joining NATO, and said that Russian President Vladimir Putin “will get Finland and Sweden as NATO members” soon. The Nordic neighbors applied for membership in April, concerned that Russia might target them next.

When they met in Bucharest in 2008, NATO leaders said that Ukraine and Georgia would join the alliance one day.

Some officials and analysts believe that move — pressed on the NATO allies by former U.S. President George W. Bush — was partly responsible for the war that Russia launched on Ukraine in February. Stoltenberg said

NATO expansion would not be hindered.

“President Putin cannot deny sovereign nations to make their own sovereign decisions that are not a threat to Russia,” the former Norwegian prime minister said. “I think what he’s afraid of is democracy and freedom, and that’s the main challenge for him.”

Even so, Ukraine will not join NATO anytime soon. With the Crimean Peninsula annexed, and Russian troops and proMoscow separatists holding parts of the south and east, it’s not clear what Ukraine’s borders would even look like.

Many of NATO’s 30 allies believe the focus now must solely be on defeating Russia, and Stoltenberg stressed that any attempt to move ahead on membership could divide them.

During the two-day meeting, Blinken will announce substantial U.S. aid for Ukraine’s energy grid, U.S. officials said. Ukraine’s network has been battered countrywide since early October by targeted Russian strikes.