Ukraine wants to receive an official invitation to join NATO. However, this will not happen at the celebrations scheduled for Washington during the NATO summit in July, as the United States and Germany are against the start of negotiations. This was reported by the NYT.
According to the article, NATO has no desire to accept a new member that would involve it in the largest land war in Europe since 1945 through the Alliance's collective security agreement.
This, the journalists note, has forced NATO to look for a middle ground, like membership, but one that is significant enough to show that it 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. Proposals put forward this week at a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels to give NATO more control over the coordination of military aid, funding and training for Ukrainian forces were immediately met with skepticism.
"The United States and Germany remain opposed to Ukraine's proposal to start membership talks in Washington, as they did at last year's Vilnius summit, and want the issue to be removed from the agenda in July, despite a similar process in the European Union that was approved last summer," the publication writes.
At the same time, all attention is focused on providing Ukraine with specific commitments that it can fulfill.
"Attempts to clearly define what conditions Ukraine must fulfill to start talks with NATO have not yet progressed," the NYT clarifies.
At the same time, as noted, none of these things will matter by July if Russia continues to gain ground and Ukraine faces the threat of losing the war - "a prospect that is becoming more real with each passing month" as Republicans in Congress continue to block a $60 billion aid package.
"The situation on the ground may look much worse than it does today, and then the question will arise: "How do we make sure that Russia does not win?" - said Ivo Daalder, former US Ambassador to NATO.
For his part, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he had been "listening carefully" to discussions among his fellow diplomats on how NATO could address the issue of Ukraine's place in the Alliance.
"The form and content of the next step towards Ukraine's membership in NATO should be decided by the allies themselves. We will look forward to the outcome, but of course we believe that Ukraine deserves to be a member of NATO and that this should happen as soon as possible," he said.
