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Nato has so far shied away from directly endorsing Ukraine’s bid
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Ukraine officially applied for membership of Nato in late September, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy saying he was taking this “decisive step” to protect “the entire community” of Ukrainians.
In response, the secretary general of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, said that “every democracy in Europe has the right to apply for Nato membership and Nato allies respect that right, and we have stated again and again that Nato’s door remains open”.
These words “shied away from directly endorsing Ukraine’s bid”, said Politico. There are doubts over whether the application will be successful, and even whether Kyiv ever imagined it would be.
Ukraine has already enjoyed support from members of the alliance since Russia launched its invasion in February. Nato states have plied Kyiv with “lethal aid”, as well as hitting Russia with the most punishing economic sanctions ever imposed on a major economy.
However, membership of the alliance would take things to a new level because Nato members are entitled to protection under Article 5, which states that an attack on one member is regarded as an attack on them all.
There is no question that Ukraine would benefit from Nato’s “defining credo”, said The New York Times. But it is for that very reason that Nato is “highly unlikely to admit a country ensnared in war”, said the paper.
In 2008, Nato leaders promised both Ukraine and Georgia that they would one day be able to join the defensive alliance. But the process has “stalled over the years”, and it seems “increasingly unlikely” that Ukraine’s bid will be successful, said Politico.
But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has “upended the geopolitical landscape”, said the news site, and effectively “reopened the question” of membership for Ukraine. Indeed, Nato has also recently welcomed applications from two other new European countries: Finland and Sweden.
Last month in a joint statement, the presidents of Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro and North Macedonia said they “firmly stand behind” the 2008 decision. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to President Zelenskyy, then tweeted that in fact ten Nato countries supported Ukraine’s membership of the Western military alliance.
“Within 48 hours of [President Zelenskyy] signing application to join Nato, 10 bloc countries supported Ukraine’s membership in the Alliance – mostly countries that remember the poisonous claws of [the Russian] empire”, Podolyak said.
“We are grateful for the leadership and responsibility. History is being made today,” he added.
The alliance is unlikely to accept Ukraine while it is “in a state of war”, said The Guardian, because fellow members would be “compelled to actively defend it against Russia”.
Zelenskyy’s “desire” to join Nato is “understandable”, wrote Steven Pifer for Atlantic Council, but his timing is “questionable” because approval for membership would require a consensus of all 30 Nato countries and Ukraine does not enjoy this universal support.
There are “escalatory risks” in making Ukraine a member, John Williams, a professor at Durham University, told Euronews. Nato would then be “pitched more clearly into the war in a much more direct way”, putting other members that border Russia, such as Poland, in the “frontline”.
Another factor is that Ukraine’s membership of Nato could prove a propaganda victory for Vladimir Putin, who has routinely justified his invasion by claiming that Moscow is threatened by Nato.
“Putin is trying super, super hard, even desperately, to convince the Russians that there is an external existential threat from Nato,” Jamie Shea, a former Nato deputy assistant secretary general, told Euronews. So “bringing in Ukraine now would just play to the hands of that narrative”.
Either way, Kyiv may not be holding its breath for its application to be accepted. “As Zelensky knows, it’s the largest of asks,” wrote Ukrainian journalist Svitlana Morenets in The Spectator, “and one that Kyiv does not expect to be granted any time soon”.
Zelenskyy himself acknowledged this reality in March. “For years we heard about the apparently open door, but have already also heard that we will not enter there, and these are truths and must be acknowledged,” he said.
Indeed, said Politico, the application was “intended to draw attention away from Vladimir Putin’s elaborately staged speech earlier in the day”, in which he announced the annexations of four Ukrainian regions.
Ukraine has had a partnership with Nato since 1992, said Alastair Kocho-Williams on The Conversation, and the alliance established a Ukraine-Nato commission in 1997, providing a discussion forum for security concerns without a “formal membership agreement”.
Nato has previously supported non-member countries like Afghanistan during humanitarian emergencies, but it generally does not commit to deploying troops to a non-member state.
Whether it signs up Ukraine or not, Nato has been given a shot in the arm by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, believe some. The conflict has “definitely revitalized Nato”, wrote former Turkish foreign minister Yasar Yakis for Arab News and “may continue to further strengthen the alliance”.
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