NATO | Ukraine wants clear steps to NATO from Vilnius – What can it get?

When Next week, the leaders of the NATO countries will gather for a summit in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, attention will be drawn to what exact words are used to describe Ukraine’s NATO path.

The question has been difficult and divisive in the union before the summit.

As the meeting approaches, the NATO countries have tried to find a common design so that NATO could appear united in the limelight of Vilnius.

President of Lithuania Gitanas Nauseous appealed to the allies on Monday so that they would dare to give a clear signal to Ukraine. This would support the Ukrainians’ will to fight, he said.

For example, the Baltic countries have shown clear signs of steps on Ukraine’s NATO path. At the same time, the United States and Germany, for example, have been cautious.

“We shouldn’t hesitate to make bolder decisions, because otherwise [presidentti Vladimir] Putin’s the system concludes that the Western allies are too weak,” Nauseda said in an interview with the Reuters news agency.

Ukrainian concrete the wish has preceded the meeting, that it would receive an invitation to the federation and a promise of a simplified process.

Ukraine has realized that its membership will not be realized until the war is over. However, it now wants a clear answer to the NATO application submitted last fall and some kind of signs of steps.

Ukraine will hardly get everything it wants, such as an invitation to join the union.

As a side plot of the meeting, it is monitored whether the president who has been invited to the meeting arrives Volodymyr Zelenskyi Vilnius at all. He has put pressure on NATO countries and communicated that he does not want to travel for nothing.

“My expectations especially from Vilnius are comparatively low”, says the security policy expert François Heisbourg Regarding the membership of Ukraine. The French Heisbourg is one of Europe’s leading names in its field.

He believes that Ukraine could get the allies to update the NATO-Ukraine Commission into a NATO-Ukraine Council, which has already been largely promised in public.

This would mean that the discussion between Ukraine and NATO would be held more widely and at a higher level than before.

Heisbourg does not believe much more, for the simple reason that there is still no consensus in NATO about when and how Ukraine should eventually become a member. In particular, the United States has not decided what kind of future security arrangement it would like for Ukraine.

Heisbourg emphasizes that the matter is now being talked about in very different ways than before.

“Do you remember when the war started? In practice, no one said then that Ukraine should be a member of NATO. Not even Ukraine itself,” he says.

“What’s new now is that in the last couple of months, a serious discussion has started to take place about what Ukraine’s future security and defense system should be like when the war ends and whether it would be NATO membership.”

Heisbourg works as a senior European expert at the British Institute of International Affairs, IISS, and as a special advisor at the French Strategic Research Foundation, FRS. He was preparing a report on Finland’s NATO membership in 2016.

Allies it is known that in the discussions between

Disunity would be a bad message for both Russia and Ukraine.

One possible compromise has been considered to be that Ukraine would not have to go through the so-called MAP program (Membership Action Plan) preparing for membership.

It would be a concrete signal to Ukraine, but at the same time membership would not be promised soon.

Abandoning the MAP program would mean that Ukraine could in time join NATO in an accelerated manner, as Finland joined and as Sweden is about to join.

Politico magazine said the NATO Secretary General recently Jens Stoltenberg tried to gather support for such a record. It also told that the United States is open to the idea.

President of the United States Joe Biden however, seemed to reject the idea in public. He was asked whether Ukraine’s path to NATO should be made easier.

“No. Because they have to meet the same standards. So we’re not going to make it easy,” Biden said According to Politico.

President Sauli Niinistö No on Sunday in anticipation of the Vilnius meeting wanted to open Finland’s lines to Ukrainian registrations unnecessarily precisely while the discussions are still ongoing. He emphasized the importance of a common line.

“The way I think about this matter, at least one way is to try to help Ukraine in every way in meeting NATO’s criteria,” Niinistö said, however.

Expert Heisbourg reminds that the membership preparation program is the exception rather than the rule in NATO’s more than 70-year history.

This has been required since the 1990s until North Macedonia joined in 2020.

Heisbourg reminds that Ukraine has shown that its armed forces are more capable than many current NATO countries.

At the same time, he considers the question of the membership program to be a side issue compared to the question of whether Ukraine eventually wants to join NATO.

Ukraine has already been promised membership in 2008 at the summit in Bucharest. However, this alignment was not clear, rather it underlined the dividing lines.

At that time, no consensus was reached that the process would actually be started. In particular, Germany opposed Ukraine’s inclusion in the MAP program.

Key the question in Ukraine’s NATO membership debate is how the promises made to Ukraine affect not only Ukraine’s security but also the war settings.

Membership itself while the war lasts would be difficult, because it would bring Ukraine within the scope of NATO’s fifth article, i.e. in practice it would take NATO to war with Russia. There are also reservations about whether clear membership steps could now only bring NATO closer to the conflict.

For example, the former Secretary General of NATO Anders Fogh Rasmussen on the other hand, has held the view that making Ukraine’s membership dependent on the cessation of violence encourages Putin to continue the war.

According to Fogh Rasmussen, Ukraine should be invited to become a member of NATO.

“By sending the invitation now, we are telling Putin that Ukraine will become a member of NATO. It won’t happen overnight. But you [Putin] you will not be able to stop the process. Our door is open to Ukraine, and you are not the doorman”, Fogh Rasmussen said At the Atlantic Council panel discussion earlier in June.

If an agreement on membership is not reached, it would be best for Fogh Rasmussen to give step signs: remove the requirement from the MAP program, promise to review NATO’s expansion at next spring’s summit in Washington, and establish a NATO-Ukraine Council.

Heisbourg brings up the status of Crimea as a difficult question if the war were to end and Ukraine wanted to become a member of NATO. Russia has occupied Crimea illegally, which the West has condemned.

Heisbourg seeks a historical point of comparison from when West Germany was accepted into NATO in 1955 and East Germany was left out.

West Germany promised not to use force to bring Germany back together, which was important to the Soviet Union.

In a similar situation, the Russians should now decide whether it is more important for them to hold on to Crimea so that Ukraine is a member of NATO or whether Ukraine would continue to use force to return Crimea to itself, says Heisbourg.

Ukraine should ask itself the opposite.

The Germans at the time decided that it was more important for them to be a member and to be defended by the Western powers than to achieve a quick reunification. A peaceful reunification still remained on the table, Heisbourg reminds.

“My hunch is that if you accepted West Germany’s 1955 model as a working model for Ukraine’s membership, the situation would be easier to accept in Ukraine than in Moscow,” says Heisbourg.

This is despite the fact that Crimea’s position is difficult as it is part of Ukraine.

To be resolved there is also the question of how to guarantee Ukraine’s security until it could potentially become a member.

The whole that is expected from Vilnius does not only concern Ukraine’s NATO membership promises, but also the continuation of its support.

Ukraine has hoped for clear security guarantees while it is not yet a member. According to various media reports major NATO countries have discussed providing such. In practice, they could promise to offer the help they are already offering in the long term.

Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg has also been presented a multi-year support program that would make Ukraine’s armed forces fully NATO-compatible, which would already bring Ukraine closer to NATO.