Top Ukrainian officials are hoping that next week’s NATO leaders’ summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, will be an epic moment — when Ukraine finally receives a “clear signal” that it will eventually join the alliance, anchoring the country in the West’s security infrastructure and sending an unequivocal message to Moscow, The Washington Post reports.
Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, said the summit “must end” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg “standing next to each other” and proclaiming, in Sak’s words: “Today, we have reached a historical decision. Today, we have invited Ukraine to join NATO.”
“Then everyone drinks champagne,” Sak said.
But just days before leaders arrive in the Lithuanian capital, it’s far from clear that corks will be popping — or that there are even any bottles to put on ice. Instead, questions loom about what options Ukraine will be left with if its hopes are dashed, which may probably be the case.
NATO allies are still negotiating what exactly to offer Ukraine at the meeting, which begins Tuesday.
On Friday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg kept things vague, saying only that allies would “reaffirm that Ukraine will become a member” — which has been the alliance’s fraught position for 15 years — and “unite on how to bring Ukraine closer to this goal.”
Washington, which holds the greatest sway over decisions of the 31-member alliance, has been maneuvering for months to lower Kyiv’s expectations by focusing the conversation on “security guarantees” rather than membership in the near term, which many allies see as impossible to even discuss so long as Ukraine remains at war with Russia.
Reznikov said the Vilnius summit will afford the alliance an opportunity to “correct the mistake” that was made at a 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest — where Ukraine and Georgia were told they would become members sometime in the future, without saying when or how this would come about.
