NATO got its unity moment, but it put off the big questions for Ukraine.
Ukraine is not a member of NATO and is probably not going to be a member of NATO anytime soon. But Ukraine was definitely the big headliner of the NATO summit, both for what it got and for what it didn’t.
Ahead of NATO’s summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, the alliance sought a show of solidarity and unity as Russia’s war in Ukraine enters a precarious period. Kyiv is waging its counteroffensive to liberate Russian-occupied territory, but it is slow going. Even though that was somewhat expected, Western leaders are worrying whether Ukraine — and their own stockpiles — can sustain such a war. The summit represented a chance to recommit to Ukraine, but also to lay out NATO’s political and military future in a changed Europe and world.
All of that raised the stakes for this summit, which was full of big agenda items like spending commitments and regional defense planning. But questions around Ukraine’s status took up most of the political urgency.What Ukraine got from the NATO summit
Ahead of the summit, Kyiv wanted a more substantial timeline for joining the alliance, rather than the vague promise of someday becoming a NATO member. It was backed by some NATO members, including some in Eastern Europe. Other countries, the United States and Germany among them, were reluctant to offer any concrete commitments while Ukraine is fighting a war with no clear end, as it would risk pulling the alliance more directly into the conflict.
That more cautious approach won out. In NATO’s official communiqué from the summit, it said allies have agreed that Ukraine can join NATO when “conditions are met.” Exactly what those conditions are was not clearly defined, though officials have indicated that it includes ongoing political and rule-of-law reforms, beyond just a stop to Russia’s war.
NATO tried to sweeten the deal by scrapping Ukraine’s Membership Action Plan a series of formal benchmarks prospective NATO members have to follow — a recognition that Ukraine has made progress on military and political goals. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at a press conference on Tuesday that abandoning MAP would change Ukraine’s membership path “from a two-step process to a one-step process.”
The alliance is also now hosting a NATO-Ukraine Council, where Kyiv gets a seat at the table with all the other NATO members and partners. This council honor once belonged to Russia, so it carries additional weight that Ukraine got its own.
“This is a strong package for Ukraine, and a clear path toward its membership in NATO,” Stoltenberg said at the press conference.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, though, did not initially see it that way. At the start of the summit, his tone was sharp, and he called it “unprecedented and absurd” that no time frame was set for the invitation or Ukraine’s NATO membership.
“It seems there is no readiness neither to invite Ukraine to NATO nor to make it a member of the Alliance,” he added.
Zelenskyy is not wrong here, at least in acknowledging that there is no readiness to invite Ukraine into the alliance. While, again, some are saying Ukraine deserves more concrete commitments, especially now that its military, thanks to Western equipment, is one of the stronger armies in Europe, other partners saw the costs of giving concrete commitments as far too high and unpredictable.
