NATO summit is due to kick off July 11 in Vilnius, Lithuania, with a focus on Ukraine. Kiev is striving to join the bloc and receive a new portion of military aid from its Western patrons. How will NATO member states respond to Ukraine pleas?
“US President [Joe] Biden has declared that Ukraine is not ‘ripe’ to join NATO,” Paolo Raffone, a strategic analyst and director of the CIPI Foundation in Brussels, told Sputnik. “Some European allies, among others Germany, also doubt the readiness of Ukraine to join NATO. At the Vilnius NATO summit, it will not be decided on the membership of Ukraine in NATO. However, some sort of ‘arrangement’ in the form of a NATO-Ukraine council can be agreed upon. It is very clear that the US does not want any direct military confrontation with Russia – a position reaffirmed by Biden and [CIA Director William] Burns – the issue of Ukraine NATO membership is off the table.”While encouraging the Kiev regime to continue fighting against Russia despite obvious failures in the beginning of Ukraine’s well-advertised counteroffensive, the US and Germany are hesitant to make Ukraine a NATO member state. Instead, it is expected that the US, UK, France, and Germany will provide Kiev with some sort of security guarantees to ensure a regular delivery of Western military aid.”I don’t think it’s ready for membership in NATO,” President Joe Biden told CNN in an interview released on Sunday. The US president noted that joining NATO means meeting “all the qualifications, from democratization to a whole range of other issues.”The Ukrainian leadership appears to be “pessimistic” about the forthcoming summit’s agenda.
