Why Ukraine’s NATO membership hopes keep running into trouble

While NATO leaders this week are expected to reassure Ukraine of their continued support, they are likely to fall short of clearly addressing the possibility of Ukraine’s future membership in the Western military alliance.

“Ukraine is moving closer to NATO,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters, on Friday (5 July) in Brussels.

“More funding, more military support, more security agreements and more interoperability constitute a bridge to NATO membership and a very strong package for Ukraine at the [Washington] summit,” added Stoltenberg.

But how close is ‘close’?

NATO’s official line so far has been that Ukraine will join the Western military alliance ‘one day’, but not while the country is still at war. Plus, it must meet two conditions as laid out in the treaty: democracy and contribution to security.

Though Ukrainian officials in private admit they were not expecting an invitation to join NATO this summit, or any time soon for that matter, they also stress Kyiv was looking ‘at least’ for reinforced language in Washington.

If not that, “we would like to see something similar to an invitation,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Bloomberg, adding this would be seen as “a sign that nobody is afraid of Putin and that everyone is sure in the US leadership.”

The Ghost of Vilnius

NATO’s membership language question had already been on the table before, last year at the Vilnius summit.

“Ukraine’s future is in NATO,” the alliance’s leaders declared in their final communiqué, which re-affirmed its current state of relations with Ukraine and set up a high-level body for emergency consultations.

But it fell short on sending a clear message on when membership will be granted, with the hesitancy coming from Washington and Berlin.

Many staunch Ukraine supporters had seen Vilnius as an opportunity to bury the memory of the 2008 NATO Bucharest summit that ‘welcomed’ Ukraine’s – and Georgia’s – Euro-Atlantic aspirations but gave them no plan on how to get there.

“This seems to us a bit like we were on repeat: There is widespread agreement that NATO should move ‘beyond Bucharest’, but we are not honest with ourselves – and them – what this should actually mean,” one person involved in previous summit negotiations, granted anonymity to speak more freely, told Euractiv.

While dissatisfied, Zelenskyy returned to Ukraine claiming that “Vilnius established a foundation for Ukraine’s way to NATO.”

“But while Vilnius left a feeling of frustration, there it became very clear that winning the war really might be the only viable exit out of the eternal NATO waiting room,” a second person who was present at the negotiation table, told Euractiv.

Since Vilnius, NATO has been struggling to find a balance between recognising Ukraine’s progress in reforms and modernisation of armed forces towards membership, while moderating Kyiv’s expectations to join the club sooner rather than later.

But on the eve of this year’s Washington summit, the phrasing still remains under discussion to balance out those views on when Ukraine can become a member, how to link the words “bridge, “irreversibility”, and “reforms”, according to several NATO diplomats with knowledge of the negotiations.

It is unlikely the matter will be fully settled when leaders arrive in Washington on Tuesday (9 July).

A ‘bridge’ apart

“We are pulling together a series of deliverables that will serve as essence as a bridge to membership,” a US State Department official told reporters just a few days ahead of the Washington summit.

This would include the institutionalisation of Western support and training for Ukraine, an annual €40 billion political financial pledge, a commitment to the country’s membership status, and the appointment of a NATO envoy to Kyiv, they added.

Eastern European NATO members are pushing for Kyiv to get a clear road map.

Ukraine’s staunchest supporters “would like to achieve the strongest possible wording about signalling that Ukraine will become one day a NATO member and on all the practical work strands currently conducted will provide a bridge to NATO membership,” Estonia’s Undersecretary for Defence Policy, Tuuli Duneton, told reporters.

But the Biden administration, as well as the majority of other NATO members, have so far refrained from supporting Ukraine’s immediate membership and have been at odds whether, and how, to strengthen NATO’s wording on Ukraine’s future membership in the alliance this time around.

Negotiations on the draft declaration text are expected to remain ongoing until the very last minute, people familiar with the matter told Euractiv.

A “bridge” to NATO, including concrete military aid and training to modernise the armed forces, and a pledge to declare Kyiv’s path into the Western military alliance “irreversible” could offer Kyiv reinforced language from all sides, and could be seen as progress, said multiple top NATO officials recently.

The “bridge” narrative would suggest Ukraine has moved closer to membership and is expected it will continue to do so, three NATO diplomats told Euractiv.

Throwing cold water on any Ukrainian hope to receive an offer to join the alliance, “[NATO] allies are not looking at issuing a proper invitation,” a US State Department official said, echoed by a majority of NATO diplomats.

Several NATO diplomats did, however, express doubts about whether this particular  language chosen to mark Ukraine’s progress, does any good to both the process and the credibility, as this complicates NATO’s promise to Ukraine, that they would become a member one day.

“It’s nice that we’re getting into the business of building bridges, the question is how strong or stable are they?” one senior European diplomat told Euractiv.

“It makes a difference whether the bridge is made of paper, wood or steel and certainly it makes a difference whether its short or rather long-distance,” they added.

“The thing about the bridge is that we don’t know how long it is,” another NATO diplomat also said.

Need for reforms

This comes also as internally, (delete) NATO members remain divided between those who want to see Ukraine’s journey unhindered from additional conditions from those already in the NATO treaty – the ability to contribute to the alliance’s security and democracy – and those that want to remind Kyiv that it still has a long way to reform.

The United States and Germany, want to temper the war-torn country’s expectations by linking future membership to domestic reforms, and thus indicate the move towards membership could be halted should there be no progress on the matter.

Many of reforms required from Ukraine for NATO accession are also part of the EU accession process. These include continued democratic and Ukrainian security and defence sector reforms.

Kyiv has made much progress on reforms since last year’s summit in Vilnius, including on defence procurement, said the US State Department official quoted above.

Other NATO diplomats have highlighted the swaps in high-level officials, such as the appointment of a minister of defence, and corruption-related changes.

“Reforms are needed, the focus at the moment is providing Ukraine with the assistance they need,” said the US official.

Divergent public views

A dozen foreign policy experts on Wednesday (3 July) called on NATO members to avoid advancing toward Ukrainian membership at the summit, according to a letter from more than 60 analysts, seen by Euractiv.

The group’s main argument supports the hypothesis among those opposing Ukraine’s membership, that if Kyiv is admitted, Russia by attacking Ukraine in the future, could trigger NATO’s Article 5, the mutual defence clause.

“The closer NATO comes to promising that Ukraine will join the alliance once the war ends, the greater the incentive for Russia to keep fighting the war,” the group’s letter reads.

“The challenges Russia poses can be managed without bringing Ukraine into NATO,” they add.

Researchers from the RAND Corporation argue that NATO members would benefit from offering Ukraine clarity about conditions for its future membership at the summit.

The Atlantic Council, too, has been pushing for Ukraine’s NATO membership, arguing that it would prove to Kyiv that Western support would continue in the long-term.

But Ukrainian citizens say they want to see the West provide more additional weapons, rather than deliver quickly on accession into NATO, according to a European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) poll released on Wednesday.

Only 22% of Ukrainian respondents said they are in favour of accepting NATO membership, in exchange for giving up Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia. At the same time, a clear majority, 71% of them, is against any deal of this kind.

[Edited by Rajnish Singh]

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