NATO said on Tuesday that Ukraine would be invited to join the alliance but did not say how or when, which disappointed its president but reflected President Biden’s and other leaders’ determination not to become directly involved in the war of Ukraine with Russia.
In a communiqué approved by all 31 NATO countries, the alliance said that “Ukraine’s future lies in NATO,” and it will be allowed to join when member states agree that the terms ripe – but it offered no details or a timetable. It pledged to continue to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia and to involve the alliance’s foreign ministers in a periodic assessment of Ukraine’s progress towards NATO standards – both in terms of democratization and military integration.
The wording means that Mr Biden, who declared last week that “Ukraine is not ready for NATO membership”, and like-minded allies had prevailed on Poland and the Baltic states who wanted a formal invitation for Ukraine to join the alliance to join once the war ends. NATO leaders released the document, a compromise product after weeks of discussion, at a summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Hours earlier, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, apparently aware of what he was about to say, had given a blast to the NATO leadership. “It is unprecedented and absurd if no timetable has been set, neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine’s membership,” he wrote on Twitter before landing in Vilnius.
The NATO commitment went a little further than the vague statement in 2008 that Georgia and Ukraine would eventually join. Given Ukraine’s shaky democracy, corruption, and old Soviet arsenal, that was a hazy prospect at best, and neither Ukraine nor Georgia has since joined.
Instead of membership, NATO leaders on Tuesday offered Mr Zelensky new membership military aid to fight Russia, promises of further integration and statements intended to declare to President Vladimir V. Putin that his strategy of exhausting European nations would not work. Their communiqué stated that Ukraine had moved closer to the political and military standards of the alliance.
Mr Zelensky will dine with NATO leaders and take part in the first NATO-Ukraine Council on Wednesday, an attempt to integrate the country into alliance talks even as a non-voting member.
But what Ukraine wants – and what Mr Biden and Germany, among others, are unwilling to offer – is the main benefit of full membership: the promise of collective defense, that an attack on a single NATO country is an attack on all.
Mr Biden has warned he does not want to be forced into direct combat with Russian troops, warning “that’s World War III”.
Mr Zelensky had threatened not to attend the meeting if he was not satisfied with the NATO commitment. He and his top aides have argued that if Ukraine had joined NATO, Mr Putin might not have dared to invade and risk war with the Western alliance.
Historians and geostrategists will debate what ifs for years to come. But with the release of the communique, Mr. Biden appears to have gotten two of the things he most wanted from this summit.
With Swedish concessions and help from NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Mr. Biden helped convince President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey to lift his block on Sweden’s membership, which requires unanimous consent. And with the language adopted in Vilnius on Tuesday, there is still no set date — or even set terms — when Ukraine will join.
The closest the statement comes to a commitment is if the allies agree and the terms are met.
As a major concession, NATO agreed that Ukraine would not have to go through a preparatory process to prepare it for an invitation. Sweden and Finland, which joined this year, were also allowed to skip such a route.
Moscow made it clear that it was following the summit closely. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov said new weapons delivered to Ukraine would “force us to take countermeasures”, and criticized Turkey for allowing Sweden to join. Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov said Russia would examine “how quickly and how deeply NATO is expanding into the territory of Finland and Sweden,” and would respond accordingly.
The dispute within NATO over its joint statement had deep roots, said Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation.
“There is a fundamental divide between the United States, Germany and other less vocal allies who are committed to the principle of the open door to NATO, but without wanting to see a concrete timeline or automatism, and those countries close to Russia who insist very hard. It is difficult to translate Bucharest’s vagueness into something much more concrete,” he said. It was a 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, that finally promised Ukraine and George membership.
For the United States, Mr Charap said, premature membership of Ukraine “risks a NATO-Russia war as a result of a country at war with Russia joining the alliance,” he said, adding noted that Moscow has been calling Ukrainian for years. NATO membership a red line. “For the others, Ukrainian membership is a path to peace and stability, because it will deter Russia and entrench Ukraine and end instability.”
Bucharest’s pledge was a way to delay the barrel of Ukrainian membership. That may not be possible anymore, given the war. “At some point the road ends and maybe we will reach that end,” said Mr. Charap.
The NATO alliance was eager to use this Vilnius summit as a demonstration of transatlantic unity, and it has largely succeeded in that goal. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in several interviews that Mr. Putin’s strategy was to wait until NATO countries were tired of war. But the Russian leader, he said, “will not survive Ukraine, and the sooner he ends this war of aggression, the better.”
The Allies came to Vilnius with more pledges of weapons and military equipment for Ukraine to support its slowly advancing counter-offensive: long-range “scalp” cruise missiles from France; 25 additional Leopard tanks, 40 additional infantry fighting vehicles and two more Patriot air defense missile launchers. There was a $770 million package from Germany and $240 million from Norway for unspecified equipment and other support.
In addition, the defense ministers of Denmark and the Netherlands announced they had gathered 11 countries to help train Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets as early as next month. Mr Biden agreed in May to withdraw his objections to providing Ukraine with F-16s, though that may not happen until next year.
The Scalp missiles are the same weapon as the Storm Shadows Britain said it sent to Ukraine in May. The missiles, jointly manufactured by France and Britain, have a range of about 150 miles.
France had previously ruled out supplying Ukraine with such missiles, citing concerns that they could be used to strike targets in Russia, escalating the conflict. But President Emmanuel Macron said he was now sending Scalp missiles to help Ukraine defend itself.
The communiqué also contained more than 60 references to nuclear weapons, warned Russia of “serious consequences” if it uses one in the war, and at the same time promised the nuclear forces of NATO’s three nuclear powers: the United States, Britain and France. to modernize.
Kremlin officials have suggested several times that Russia might use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, and it has recently begun deploying them in Belarus. “We condemn Russia’s irresponsible nuclear rhetoric and coercive nuclear signals,” the leaders’ statement said.
The communiqué also contains lengthy sections on the threats emanating from China. Although the wording is milder than the references to Russia, it argues that China poses a longer-term threat. The language is significant because NATO, focused on European security, has given little thought to China in recent years.
“The People’s Republic of China is seeking control over key technology and industrial sectors, critical infrastructure and strategic materials and supply chains,” it said, using the abbreviation for the People’s Republic of China. “It uses its economic influence to create strategic dependencies and increase its influence. It seeks to undermine the rules-based international order, including in space, cyber and maritime.”
Taken together, the Russia and China parts of the communiqué leave little doubt that NATO sees the world entering an era of confrontation at least as complex as the Cold War.
Mr Stoltenberg went to great lengths to show reporters that NATO’s commitment to Ukrainian membership was different from the vague promise of 2008.
He said NATO had moved much closer to Ukraine since Russia captured Crimea in 2014 and sparked a separatist war in eastern Ukraine, and NATO began training Ukrainian troops. They have come even closer since last year’s full-scale invasion of Russia, when NATO countries began pumping tens of billions of dollars worth of military equipment into Ukraine.
Mr. Stoltenberg and US officials argue that Mr. Zelensky will be able to return to Ukraine with a number of important prizes: direct involvement in NATO’s discussion of the war, a stronger commitment to Ukrainian membership, new commitments from military and financial aid for the medium and longer term, and the message of determination sent to Mr. Putin.
