Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy yesterday welcomed new security guarantees from Western powers, but said that, in the face of the Russian invasion, they would be no substitute for eventual NATO membership.
On the last day of NATO’s Vilnius summit, the G7 group of major powers made a long-term pledge of support to help Ukraine defeat the Russian threat and to deter future aggression after the war ends.
This was enough to draw a furious condemnation from the Kremlin, but not sufficient to meet the ambitions of Zelenskiy, who traveled to the Lithuanian capital seeking an invitation and clear timetable for Ukraine to join the Atlantic alliance.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“The best guarantee for Ukraine is to be in NATO,” Zelenskiy said, expressing confidence that once the war is over Ukraine would be welcomed, but saying that the G7 guarantees should be seen “not instead of NATO, but as security guarantees on our way to integration.”
The 31 NATO leaders had on Tuesday said that Ukraine would get an invite when they agreed that all “conditions are met.”
Zelenskiy explained this by saying: “I understand this as ‘when it will be safe on our land.’”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg was sympathetic to Zelenskiy’s position, but stressed the importance of the progress he said Ukraine had made at the summit.
Zelenskiy was joining NATO leaders at an inaugural meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Council, and said several allies were boosting bilateral assistance, such as France with a pledge of long-range missiles and the Netherlands leading a coalition to train fighter pilots, Stoltenberg said.
“Today, we meet as equals, I look forward to the day we meet as allies,” Stoltenberg said.
In a joint statement seen by Agence France-Presse, the G7 — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US — said they would send weapons and support to help Ukraine defeat the ongoing Russian invasion and to deter any future attack once peace is secured.
“We will stand with Ukraine as it defends itself against Russian aggression, for as long as it takes,” the statement said.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN that Ukraine could not join NATO right away, because it would be “an inescapable fact” that the treaty’s mutual defense clause would mean that the allies would be immediately in a direct war with Russia.
However, he said that “the G7 ... will stand up with President Zelenskiy to announce we’re prepared to provide that security assistance long out into the future, and certainly for the duration of the period while Ukraine is working its way on the pathway toward NATO.”
President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, that the step “will make Europe much more dangerous for years and years.”
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