No timetable for Ukraine to join NATO
Zelensky blasts no specific plan as ‘absurd’
VILNIUS, Lithuania — NATO declared Tuesday that Ukraine would be invited to join the alliance but did not say how or when, disappointing its president but reflecting the resolve by President Biden and other leaders not to be drawn directly into Ukraine’s war with Russia.
In a communique agreed by all 31 NATO nations, the alliance said that “Ukraine’s future is in NATO,” and it will be allowed to join when the member countries agree that conditions are ripe — but it did not offer specifics or a timetable.
It promised to continue supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia and to engage the alliance’s foreign ministers in a periodic review of Ukraine’s progress toward reaching NATO standards — in both democratization and military integration.
The wording means that Biden, who declared last week that “Ukraine isn’t ready for NATO membership,” and likeminded allies had prevailed over Poland and Baltic nations that wanted a formal invitation for Ukraine to join the alliance as soon as the war ends. NATO leaders released the document, a compromise product after weeks of argument, at a summit meeting in Vilnius.
Hours earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, apparently aware of what it would say, issued a blast at the NATO leadership.
“It’s unprecedented and absurd when a time frame is not set, neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine’s membership,” he wrote on Twitter before landing in Vilnius.
The NATO commitment went somewhat beyond its vague statement in 2008 that Georgia and Ukraine would eventually become members. Given Ukraine’s shaky democracy, corruption, and old Soviet arsenal, that was a hazy prospect at best, and neither it nor Georgia has since joined.
In lieu of membership, NATO leaders on Tuesday offered Zelensky new military aid to fight Russia, promises of further integration and statements intended to declare to Russian President Vladimir Putin that his strategy of wearing down the European nations would not work.
Their communique stated that Ukraine had moved closer to the alliance’s political and military standards.
Zelensky will have dinner with NATO leaders and participate Wednesday in the first NATO-Ukraine Council, an effort to integrate the country into the alliance’s discussions even as a nonvoting member.
But what Ukraine wants — and what Biden and Germany, among others, are reluctant to offer — is the main benefit of full membership: the promise of collective defense, that an attack on any single NATO country is an attack on all.
Biden has warned that he does not want to be forced into direct combat with Russian forces, warning “that is World War III.”
Zelensky had threatened not to attend the meeting if he was unhappy with the NATO commitment. He and his top aides have argued that if Ukraine had entered NATO, Putin might not have dared invade and risk a war with the Western alliance.
Historians and geostrate-gists will be arguing about that what-if for years. But with the release of the communique, Biden appears to have gotten two of the things he wanted most from this summit.
With Swedish concessions and help from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Biden helped persuade Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to drop his blockade of Sweden’s membership, which requires unanimous consent.
And with the language adopted Tuesday in Vilnius, there is no defined date — or even defined conditions — under which Ukraine will become a member.
The closest the statement comes to a commitment are these words: “We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the alliance when allies agree and conditions are met.”
As one significant concession, NATO agreed that Ukraine would not need to go through a preliminary process to prepare it for an invitation. Both Sweden and Finland, which joined this year, were also allowed to skip such a process.
Moscow made clear that it was closely following the summit. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said new weapons provided to Ukraine would “force us to take countermeasures,” and criticized Turkey for allowing Sweden to join.