At the same time, the organization itself has destroyed the arguments for refusing Ukraine.
The North Atlantic Alliance will not change its policies regarding the acquisition of Ukraine's membership in NATO, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba believes. remains in effect. Ukraine also remains on the track of Euro-Atlantic integration, but I do not see the potential in the near future for NATO to change its position similar to the European Union and start doing concrete things to ensure Ukraine's entry into the Alliance,” he said in an interview with Lb.ua .
The minister noted that although as of February 24, NATO was in an advanced position relative to the EU, because they had already decided that Ukraine would become a member of the Alliance, from that time the European Union already went to the second round, and NATO remained exactly there.
At the same time, he noted that NATO itself destroyed its entire narrative, which it used to reject Ukraine's membership.
“We were told: “We cannot go forward to the border, we will have border with Russia. What are you doing, this is Russia, hey, escalation.” Please, they now have two thousand kilometers of common border and NATO will stand at the gates of St. Petersburg.That is, all the arguments about why it is impossible to take Ukraine into the Alliance have been nullified. This is what we constantly said, that they invented all this simply to justify their reluctance to integrate us,” Kuleba noted.
He also pointed to the similar behavior of Russia, which threatened NATO for a long time. because of the issue of Ukraine's accession, but in fact did not respond to the statement regarding the membership of Sweden and Finland.
Answering the question whether the security guarantees of individual countries are a kind of alternative to membership in the Alliance, the minister noted that it is simply filling the vacuum between now and the moment when Ukraine becomes a member of the collective security mechanism.
“This is not an alternative, there is no alternative. But we have a war, we understand that NATO will not accept us tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. So what should we do? Sit and say: nothing, shall we sit and wait for NATO to take us away? And so the topic of guarantees appears. If it is not the fifth article (Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty provides that an armed attack on one or more states of the Alliance is an attack on them all and each of the member states is obliged to provide assistance to the party or parties that have been attacked), when we will all be fighting, then let's develop at least some security guarantees for Ukraine. What is the reason for the states to give us these guarantees? Because if Ukraine collapses, they will solve all these problems, of which there will be many more,” Kuleba noted.
The head of the Foreign Ministry noted that sooner or later Ukraine will become a member of a certain mechanism of collective security, but at the moment it is not clear whether it will be NATO or something already created around Ukraine.
Read also: Former Secretary General NATO told whether there is a risk of war between the Alliance and Russia
In the capital of Spain, Madrid, 30 NATO countries adopted the new concept and doctrine of the Alliance for the next 10 years. The text of the adopted concept states thatRussia is the “most significant and direct threat” to NATO, and China's “policy of coercion” challenges the “interests, security and values” of the Alliance. NATO countries strongly condemned Russia's war against Ukraine, calling on the Russian Federation to stop hostilities, and Belarus to stop participating in the war.
Also, NATO officially started the process of accepting Sweden and Finland into the Alliance. All 30 leaders supported the decision.
But is the Alliance ready to confront the Kremlin? Read about the decisions made in the Spanish capital and how Kyiv reacted to them in Volodymyr Kravchenko's article “Why NATO does not give Ukraine weapons”.
